Perhaps the most important aspect of Operation Energy Transition is deploying the strategy of extreme conservation. As part of this strategy of extreme conservation, Intelligent Communities has determined that the most cost-effective and quickest way to conserve gasoline is to eliminate employee automobile travel to businesses, turning brick-and-mortar businesses into virtual corporations. Achieving this goal is no simple task, it involves mastering sophisticated technologies including remote telephony, video conferencing, customer relationship management, and many others, and then coordinating this technology into a seamless whole.

For individual businesses to pursue this strategy on a one by one basis is quite simply, inefficient. Economy of scale is needed to make this solution economically viable for many of these businesses. Intelligent Communities will be working with Chambers of Commerce throughout the nation to convert their midsize brick-and-mortar businesses into virtual corporations to achieve the required economies of scale.

Below please find a list of our current telecommuting partners, along with a description of their importance to the telecommuting solution, as well as a list of other vendors that we will be promoting to the Chamber of Commerce groups.

ICI Telecommuting Partners
	The Telecommuting Jobs website has been serving TeleCommuters and their employers since 1996. Besides the posting of jobs and a talent pool of TeleCommuter resumes, hiring tools have been developed to allow employers to find the best match for their jobs. One of the tools gives employers the capability of live-interviewing applicants. Job seekers also have access to tools that will demonstrate they can efficiently collaborate across distance with employers. ICI certifications are currently used by Telecommuting Jobs.
	VirtualAssistants.com, one of the premier telecommuting sites, has been providing companies with virtual workers for over nine years. They have consistently worked to bring together companies with professional virtual assistants that have the abilities to get the job done. Their focus has been to create a safe community for virtual assistants to apply and obtain legitimate telecommuting employment. Companies can also feel safe in posting their employment opportunities with them as jobs are posted to their private job board and can only be viewed by their VA members.
	oDesk enables both buyers and providers of tech services to build business relationships around the world. This is possible due to a “pay by the hour” service which eases the lives of providers and buyers of services. Managers can oversee a project and chart progress with ease, and providers can rest assured their payment will be received. oDesk is primarily funded by Benchmark Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, and Sigma Partners. ICI certifications are currently used by oDesk.
	What good is a business that accepts telecommuting employees and/or contractors without employees and/or contractors capable of working as telecommuters? Employers need such employees and contractors, and VirtualVocations is a website that links businesses which have telecommuting positions with people who can fill those positions. ICI certifications are currently used by VirtualVocations.
	If a business wants to avoid setting up an expensive virtual private network, virtual workers need to be able to access their office emails remotely through a browser. Browser-based e-mail is also especially effective in group e-mail situations, such as sales@acme.com. The industry's most sophisticated and elegant email interface, in our opinion, is offered by BlueTie, which provides business users with a robust email solution featuring 10 gigabytes of shared email and file storage, support for custom domains, and multiple email aliases. Behind the scenes, BlueTie uses industry-leading anti-spam, anti-virus, and anti-phishing techniques to protect every account. Along with these e-mail services, BlueTie offers contact management capabilities and a whole host of other services too numerous to detail here, including access to an extremely well-informed and responsive technical support team with very short wait times (in our experience). ICI uses BlueTie exclusively as its e-mail provider.
Other Telecommuting Technologies
	For those not familiar with it, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software allows employees and contractors to work remotely, managing e-mails and appointments and calendars and allowing remote collaboration. SugarCRM is an exciting development in the CRM world, open-source technology. Once a few bugs in their email module are worked out, this will be essential software for any telecommuting business.
	Suppose you have an inter-office meeting, and you want to share a presentation with your colleagues? To do this, you need Web conferencing software like GotoMeeting. GotoMeeting is a superior solution because it not only works better than all the other solutions (by working more seamlessly and allowing the transfer of control among participants), but it is also extremely cost-effective, with virtually unlimited use for a relatively small monthly fee. It also works extremely well when doing presentations to clients across the United States, and can easily prevent the need for costly air travel. We use it here at Intelligent Communities, and we recommend it highly.
	Perhaps the most common objection to telecommuting is the lack of face-to-face communication amongst telecommuting colleagues. With a web cam and a free (yes, we said free) subscription to SightSpeed, remote workers with broadband connections can easily have face-to-face conversations, and the paid version of SightSpeed allows multiparty conversations of up to four people. Best of all, the software works beautifully, and we use it here internally at Intelligent Communities.
	SightSpeed is an excellent inexpensive video conferencing solution. But to really replace expensive air travel, the “Rolls-Royce” of videoconferencing solutions is required. Cisco Telepresence is that solution. While it is far more expensive than SightSpeed, Cisco TelePresence offers a very different experience: it was designed to make people look and sound like they do in person. With very high-quality audio and high-definition video at low latency and a optimized meeting environment, virtual workers and clients can communicate and converse in real time, catching every comment, gesture, expression, and nuance of the conversation. For companies with locations, partners, or customers spread globally, the solution helps keep time-sensitive processes moving ahead, presenting a cost-effective and time-saving alternative to travel. By reducing the need for travel, Cisco TelePresence will help boost productivity and virtual companies’ environmental sustainability efforts: less travel means a smaller carbon footprint.
	Telecommuting employees are now working remotely, but how do they access their applications? Does a business really need to install its applications on every remote worker's computer? No. GO-Global for Windows from GraphOn allows businesses to instantly make their Windows applications accessible from any device, platform or operating system. Local and remote users running UNIX, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Windows Mobile, or Pocket PC devices simply load a small program or a Web browser plug-in. The application then appears on their desktop either as a separate native window or within the browser, just as though it were running locally. The application retains all its features, functionality and branding.
	Imagine it: today all your employees are working together in the office, but now they are all working from home. How do you transfer calls from one person to another, how do you schedule conference calls, how do you set up corporate extensions for these remote workers? In days past, achieving this type of technical feat was only possible with expensive hardware, and deploying this hardware to each remote location would have been financially unfeasible, not to mention a potential technical and logistical nightmare. Luckily, hosted VOIP servuces have come to the rescue with a solution that is potentially completely software-based, eliminating all these costs and hassles. Hosted VOIP PBX completely replaces expensive proprietary PBX systems, and supports software-based phone calls through a computer as well as standard telephone-based calls. It also eliminates phone wiring charges, and is scalable to an unlimited number of extensions and phone lines. Businesses interested in moving to the telecommuting solution should contact Intelligent Communities for a demonstration of this technology.
	Virtual colleagues are working together, and they want to share documents. How do they do that? One way is with a virtual private network. But, in the interim, businesses which want to experiment with the telecommuting paradigm can utilize services such as Box.net, which allow remote colleagues to download and share documents with each other. The best thing about Box.net is that it is extremely inexpensive, and because it is very simple to use, less technically-savvy remote workers can share files without extensive training. We use it here at Intelligent Communities, and we recommend it highly.
	Uploading and downloading documents is one approach to remote file sharing, but wouldn't it be better for remote employees to collaborate on documents together in real time? And, wouldn't it be great if the technology enabling this was free? Well, there is such a service, GoogleDocs, which offers free file sharing for remote businesses. We use it here at Intelligent Communities, and we recommend it highly.