Learn About Open Work

Learn About Open Work Sumi Das: In an age of high gas prices and global warming, businesses are trying to figure out how their employees can spend less time on the road and more time telecommuting. Dave Douglas: How do we grow through energy efficiency and make ourselves more profitable at the same time so that’s what — Sumi Das: Dave Douglas Sun Micro system’s chief green evangelist leaves the company hit upon the answer in 1998 when they created open work. Dave Douglas: One of our biggest programs is our open work program. It let’s our employees work more flexibly from wherever. Sumi Das: Whether it’s at home or the local coffee shop Sun employees spend an average of three to four days a week out of the office but still connected through the company’s network. Dave Douglas: Our model, the company’s and network is the computer and so the question can’t we use that as part of letting our employees work from wherever it make sense on a given day. Sumi Das: Employees can use this job enabled identity card to access their data at one of the company’s drop- in locations. Ann Bamesberger: I have 15- 20 minutes. Sumi Das: Ann Bamesberger is the Vice President in charge of open work. How do people use them? Ann Bamesberger: Well, I can give you and example from my self actually. This particular job of card will know that it’s me and I can walk up to anyone of this. I obviously don’t own it, right what I own is on the net and I put in my card then very quickly it will give me a prompt to tell me that the display is locked because it’s secure. I give it my password which is what allows our security log on and it just pops up exactly where I left it and then I can take this out again, it will shut down for anyone else who wants to come up and use it and I’ve just been productive even though I’m on my way between the destination with you and then a meeting. Sumi Das: Since the program was started the financial impact has been significant. In 2007 the company saves $68 Million in real estate and energy cost and the environment is getting a boost as well. Last year the program helps cut carbon emissions in the atmosphere by 29,000 tons with fewer employees commuting on the highway to work. Programs like open work have helped spur other green initiatives at Sun from redesigning their data centers to developing new eco-friendly blade servers. Still Douglas says it’s important not to get too caught up in the green hype but instead to figure out how to measure green against the bottom line. Dave Douglas: And we’ve really tried to focus on numbers and measurements and we found out a lot of power in feeding those back into the employees and letting them know, “Hey, when you guys turn of the lights that actually made a difference. Here so I may kill a lot so we say we do the same thing with our customers. Here’s so much power this server can save versus what you’re doing today or trying to boil it down and just be honest with ourselves and not get caught up in the height but instead focus on delivering raw results. Sumi Das: I’m Sumi Das, reporting for BNET.