MICROSOFT’S recent prediction that the office could soon become a thing of the past in Yorkshire underlines just how fundamentally the internet has changed the way we do business.

The claims, made in a study published last week said that, in future, companies in Yorkshire will spend much less on traditional office space as their workers increasingly call for the opportunity to hot-desk or work from home.

According to Microsoft, only 55 per cent of office space is used at any one time, presenting businesses with a huge opportunity to work more efficiently and sustainably, through ways of working that make more use of the internet.

Remote working and hot-desking programmes are not difficult or expensive to put in place. Often all staff need to work remotely is a laptop and a home broadband connection.

This, combined with secure access to a virtual private network, gives employees all they need to operate effectively.

But before staff can start to benefit from remote working, businesses must ensure that their IT networks are able to take the strain. The good news is, however, that with extensive fibre optic networks already in the ground delivering high-speed services in Yorkshire, there’s plenty of bandwidth to go around.

David Armstrong, head of business markets for Virgin Media Business in Yorkshir