Universiti Utara Malaysia

College of Arts and Sciences

Information Technology
Advanced Database Design

Primary index files / Indexed Sequential files

Presented to : Dr. Muhamed Shahbani Abu Baker Prepared By : Belaid Mohammed Addokali Matric No : 811352

2011/2012

Virtual workplace
In early 90's, a new term is emerged in the world of business working, led to a change in some of business concepts, prompting many companies to study that new type of work and try to apply it,

Definition of Virtual Workplace "Virtual workplace, is a place unfettered by traditional limits of time and space, where employees can work from geographically dispersed areas, both within and outside standard business hours"
1 [ ]

. So, employees doesn't need face-to-face

contact to perform their jobs, they can work from their house, coffee shops, or any other workstation outside of the main office. People or employees who working together in virtual workplace or using the technology to work remotely are also known as "Telecommuters". Telecommuting Another form of virtual work arrangement is telecommutingwork carried out in a location that is remote from central offices or production facilities, where the worker has no personal contact with coworkers, but is able to communicate with them using electronic means (Gupta, Karimi, & Somers, 1995). As of late 1997, roughly 11 million US workers telecommuted, a 30% increase since 1995, according to a study by AT&T (Jackson, 1997). Two of every three Fortune 500 companies now employ telecommuters. [2].

1 2

- A. Verbeke and R. Schulz and N. Greldanus and L. Hambley, Growing the virtual workplace, The

integration value proposition telework, Edward Elgar publishing limited , 2008. -Wayne F. Cascio, A Reality now, Http://www.siop.org/tip/backissues/tipapril89/cascio.aspx , Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology., Vol. 36, No. 4, April, 1998.

Virtual Workplace

Traditional work vs. Virtual work 1

Traditional work Recruit and utilize employees at one location only Communicate face to face and brainstorming Work hours fixed Work limited to the work place

Virtual work Recruit employees in any geographical location , to support projects. Communicate via Telephone, Email/Chat, Videoconferencing, IM, Blogs, social networks. Work hours flexible. Work performed online from any location.

Statistical facts about Virtual workplace 2 About 35% of the collaborative work is usually conducted virtually rather than face to face. Over 63% of employee work time is spent communicating and collaborating, and 56% of work is accomplished away from desk. About 43% of small to mid-sized businesses considered a fully virtual workplace to deal with the economy. Over 50% of Sun microsystems employee works virtually. Accenture, a 129,000- person company, has many branch offices, but no physical headquarters. Large number of Oil companies have applied and implemented the virtual workplace environment, one of those companies is HESS oil company. About HESS company HESS is one of the biggest oil production and exploration American companies founded as Hess Incorporated in 1933, the company has grown from a small residential fuel oil delivery service to a leading global independent energy company. Hess Corporation has offices in 20 countries across six continents. The
1

- M. Robert, Working virtually, the 21 century workplace, Presentation, DeAnza College, 08/03/2012. 2 - Ibid.

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Virtual Workplace

company's headquarters is in New York City, with key regional headquarters in Houston; London; Kuala Lumpur and Woodbridge, N.J. HESS operates 26 branches all over the world and 21 oil terminals and 2 refineries in the USA. 1 Because of the communication technology is the main driver of virtual work, HESS has built a large communication network to join all branches together to reduce the time and transformation costs between branches, it is using a wide variety of communication tools to establish connection, such as video conferencing, email , chat rooms , file sharing, and IT remote Helpdesk. -Video conference Imagine that the chairman of the company want to hold a monthly or annual meeting with all of scattered branches heads. what will they do to ensure that meeting? They will enter into a long series of actions that will take a lot of time, effort, and money, such as airplane tickets, transportation, hotel reservation, and additional services. In VR, no need to all that annoying actions and procedures, just good internet connection and web camera and VOIP telephone to join video conference that held by main office. - Email Employees can send messages and important files using the email rather than sending it by Airmail or DHL .. etc. - Chatting rooms All employees may chat with any other employees in the company and its branches using chat program from Microsoft called "Microsoft Communicator" . - Remote helpdesk Remote Helpdesk team in HESS is located in different places, in New York , India, Egypt, UK and South Africa. The team is working 24/7 a week to maintain the continuity of communication. - VPN (virtual private network)

- HESS History, http://www.hess.com/company/default.aspx.

Virtual Workplace

VPN is the best practice of virtual work, because you can use VPN to access the company computers and printers and other resource as you were working in your office. In HESS, IT Helpdesk are using VPN to access remotely to install programs or fix some problems in File servers or mail servers. - File sharing HESS has setup File servers where employees can save and exchange their files with other employees regardless where they reside.

Virtual Workplace