Companies that do not refine their remote-working policies will incur increasing information-technology expenditures, seeing costs multiply up to 10 fold by 2010, new research indicates.

Market observer Gartner Research said on Wednesday that companies are relying too heavily on new technology to support remote workers, however, the solutions are seldom implemented by a central body. Instead, different groups within organizations are deploying their own technology and leaving the systems unaccounted for.

Many costs get buried in the company, and the hidden costs are growing rapidly while the centrally managed costs are declining, said said Eric Paulak, managing vice president at Gartner. These costs could be controlled if they were part of a centrally managed remote access service.

Gartner predicts that the known costs of centrally supporting remote access services will double by 2008, but the unknown costs without centralized management will triple. Dial-up access costs account for 90 percent of these costs, the firm stated.

IT/networking/remote access managers should push their companies toward more-aggregated services to control rising costs. This will require buy-in from the Chief Financial Officer because it may increase IT costs, but it should lower total corporate costs by up to 40 percent, Paulak said.

Additionally, many solutions are emerging in the market that provide a full range of options for mobile and remote workers. The trend is toward heavier use of external services, especially for basic connectivity, VPNs and security services, the report finds.