 |
|
| CURRENT SECTION :: TechZone |
The No. 1 Resource for UK IT Contractors: Comprehensive guides - Daily news IT contract jobs - Market rates - Forums - IT contractor network - Calculators |
|
 |
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have long offered the opportunity for secure flexible working, but few companies have taken full advantage. VPN products have either given comprehensive application access at the expense of mobility, or mobility at the expense of application choice. But vendor Aventail, believes its latest version (8.5) VPN platform is a giant leap towards flexible working for all the workforce. The company's vision is to see the same working environment and access technology regardless of user location. VPNs tunnel encrypted messages across a public network, like sending coded letters via Royal Mail. In recent years, two flavours of VPN have been fighting for dominance of the remote access market: SSL VPN, a browser based product offering encryption for web-based applications but requiring a gateway for non-webified software, and IPSEC VPN which tunnels data at the network layer so networked enabled products will work without modification. According to Aventail, for the first time, a combination of "Smart Tunnelling," and "Adaptive Access," allows companies to deploy one solution to manage all remote access scenarios. Employees, partners and customers can now access critical applications from everywhere, whether from a home PC, café hotspot, Internet kiosk, or behind a firewall at a client site. “Aventail’s new technology is the first solution on the market to combine the full functionality of an IPSEC solution with the granular access, policy control and traversal capabilities of an SSL VPN,” says Zeus Kerravala, vice president of research, Security Practice, Yankee Group. “The timing is good, since many IPSEC solutions are approaching the end of their product life cycle, and enterprises are starting to seriously look at remote access solutions.” Remote access and mobile working is increasingly prevalent in political, social and economic thought. Under the Employment Act 2002, parents with disabled children or children under six have the right to request flexible working, including telework. Employers have a duty to give serious consideration to such requests, and the right to request flexible working enables an employee to apply for changes to their method and hours of working. According to analyst firm Gartner, by 2007, 20 million people in Europe will be teleworking, and are demanding greater flexibility and a richer work-life-balance. And other pressures are coming to bear. Escalating security threats are forcing companies to adopt, "defence in depth," policies that partition internal networks into security zones. Regardless of access from a remote location or from within the office, the connection and means of communication are converging and there is no technical barrier to home, office or golf-course working. Fewer in-house workers, flexible hours and lower technical barriers means companies can introduce hot-desking as one mechanism to reduce costs since, as Gartner’s Policy Issues in Remote Access states: “Organisations that do not account for virtual work styles on business processes will waste IT dollars and employee productivity. A failure to align processes and services to distributed work will degrade the viability and performance of 75% of businesses." Evan Kaplin, Aventail CEO, has a degree in Environmental Science and believes passionately that the new product paves the way for companies to offer secure, flexible working, access from everywhere and can even prevent commuters from blocking the motorways and emitting tons of greenhouse gases. "In a world where you have ether broadband, where you don't have to go anywhere to get high speed access, we should be able to avoid these horrendous, predictable commutes. People can work from a variety of places other than a specific office in the centre of downtown. It should drive emissions down dramatically," says Kaplin. William Knight Jun 1, 2005 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| All content © Contractor UK Limited | [Archive] | [Register for News Letter] | [Privacy Statement] | [Terms of Use] | [Top of Page] |