London, 16th September, 2009 - New research commissioned by Star, a provider of on-demand computing and communication services, reveals that small businesses are struggling to respond to an increased demand for home working. Last week's return to school raising fears of a second wave of the swine flu pandemic, is prompting companies to reconsider how best to combat the impact of high levels of employee absenteeism on business productivity. The research, released today, confirms that small businesses of less than 100 employees are three times less likely to have any home working facilities in place, or plans to add any, than larger companies.

A report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) earlier this month warns companies to anticipate absences of up to 50%. The Star survey revealed that 23% of small companies with less than 20 employees and 30% of mid-sized companies (500-1000 employees) are actively considering adding additional remote working facilities to enable employees - who may need to work from home to care for sick children or to avoid an outbreak of the virus at the office - to remain productive whilst working from home.

The survey reveals that home working has, until now, mainly been the preserve of senior management, with 49% of all companies offering remote email and 59% offering remote access to applications and files, only to this privileged group of employees. British employers have, however, been sensitive to the needs of those most at risk by infection from the virus. 49% of companies claim to have made provisions for staff that are pregnant or suffer from an underlying medical condition, to allow them to work from home.

Interestingly, the survey reveals that the key barrier to implementing home working has been, not price, but the inability of their existing infrastructure to cope with the demands of remote working. Martino Corbelli, Marketing Director of Star, who commissioned the research comments, "The research findings have backed up the massive surge in interest for home and remote working that we've seen since the swine flu outbreak occurred earlier this year. It's noticeable that all sizes of companies are actively looking to explore ways to extend the use of email and remote data access to all employees, not just the management team, so that staff to continue to be productive even if they can't make it into the office."

Jane Dewar, practice manager at Bowman Riley Architects who recently installed Star's managed remote access service to allow their management team to work from home adds, "By outsourcing the problem of remote access to a specialist like Star, if a member of staff is worried about the swine flu threat and asks to work from home, we can now have them up and running with Microsoft Exchange email and secure remote server in their home office within 30 minutes".

To download the full survey findings go to: http://www.star.co.uk/Log/?pdfname=/Global/pdf/Star_swine_flu%20_remote_working_survey_results_0909.pdf

To find out more about Star's managed, remote access service please visit http://www.star.co.uk/remote.

Notes to Editors:

About Star
Star Technology Services Ltd. (Star) is an independent, privately held Internet Services Provider (ISP) founded by brothers Ben and Jos White in 1995. In 2007 it de-merged from the MessageLabs Group in order to focus on new technology development and to enable it to focus on the SMB-market. The company is head quartered in Gloucester, with regional offices in London and Manchester.

Star provides business Internet products and services to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The company has been at the forefront of technology innovation for more than a decade and is instrumental in making IT more relevant and cost-effective for SMBs, in order to solve real business problems and help deliver competitive advantage.

The company has preferred supplier relationships with some of the leading technology companies - BT, Microsoft, Juniper, Cisco, IBM, Tivoli and MessageLabs - a company founded by Ben and Jos in 2000.