brownlee thomas, ph.d. principal analyst

ForrTel: Supporting Mobile And Remote Workers — Common And Best PracticesBrownlee Thomas, Ph.D.

Principal Analyst

Forrester Research

June 11, 2004. Call in at 10:55 a.m. Eastern Time

Agenda

• The growing appeal of telecommuting — for workers and employers

• Challenges for IT in supporting remote workers

• Challenges for IT in supporting mostly mobile workers

• Common and best practices

Agenda

• The growing appeal of telecommuting

• Challenges for IT to support regular mobile and remote workers


• Common and best IT and corporate practices in supporting remote and mobile workers

Telecom enables and empowers the remote worker

• Telecommuting is increasingly attractive — why?

» Changing demographics

– Aging population

– Growing number dual-earner families and desire for work/life balance

– Knowledge-worker labor shortage

– Increasingly geographically dispersed organizations

• Many — but not all — workers and jobs are well-suited

Telecommuting trends

• More than 80 million workers worldwide in 2003, of which > 50% are salaried workers

• ITAC 2004: 23.5 million teleworkers with employers in the US in 2003, another 23.4 million self-employed teleworkers

» Home-based teleworking by US employees has grown 40% since 2001

• Vast majority of companies have some or many remote or mobile workers

• > 80% of employees work outside corporate HQ (sales offices, regional facilities, retail outlets, home offices)

IT — balancing opportunities and challenges

Badidea

Letthem

Gotit !

RESISTANCE INERTIA CHAMPION

28% to 32% (2001)<10% (2004)

18% to 22% (2001)30% to 35% (2004)

Agenda





Approaches vary for supporting different types of telework

Three main categories:

1. Regular mobile and remote workers

2. Day extenders and casual/occasional telecommuters

3. Always-mobile employees

Enabling telecom technologies for remote workers

• The Internet

» Web-based applications

» Remote-access virtual private networks (IPSec Internet VPN)

• High-speed access

» ISDN from telcos @ 128 Kbps

» xDSL from telcos @ 400 to 600 Kbps

» Cable modem from cablecos @ 1 to 3 Mbps

» Fixed wireless and Wi-Fi @ 1 to 10 Mbps (shared)

Telecommuting program implementation

1. Manageability — connectivity and software procurement, deployment, upgrades, monitoring, planning, M-A-C

2. Ease of use

3. Privacy, collaborative tools

4. Control and predict costs (multi-technology access, usage, roaming, chargeback)

Changing user wants, evolving user needs IT challenge to ensure:

Top IT issues in supporting remote workers

• Security:

» The enterprise network, corporate information

• Support:

» Remote software and systems upgrades

» Technology and new service migration

» Remote/online training

» Help desk (especially off-hours)

• Monitoring compliance with IT security policies, including appropriate use

GigaWorld IT Forum 2004 and GigaWorld IT Forum Europe 2004: session poll results

IT challenge: supporting remote workers

Corporate officeHome

office(Cable

modem, DSL, dialup)

Personalfirewall

ISP POP

UnencryptedInternet access

VPN clienton PC

(company PC)

VPN Tunnel

Application servers

Central siteVPN gateway

Agenda





Enterprise mobility implications

• Mobility will grow in importance

» “M-business” will be critical to business success by 2006

• Important benefits:

» Improved productivity, better customer service by enabling:

– Immediate access to email/voicemail

– Ability to quickly access customer/user data

– Ability to process orders, check status for troubleshooting

– Reduced delays for dispatch and delivery

Enabling technologies for mobile workers

• Laptops» 802.11 cards for hotspot access and WLANs

» 2.5/3G mobile modems for laptop PCs

• Handhelds» Pagers (two-way)

» Blackberry email devices (2G Mobitex @ 9.6 Kbps and 2.5/3G GSM-GPRS, 1xrtt)

» Cell phone SMS and email (dialup @ 14 to 18 Kbps)

» GSM-GPRS devices @ 40+ Kbps

» CDMA 1xrtt devices @ 80+ Kbps

» Smartphones, PDAs

Laptops and PDA usage go mainstream

Laptop/handheld use

2002:2002: 92% wired, 75% wireless; RAS PDAs 76%)2004:2004: 94% wired, 100% wireless; RAS PDAs 94%+)

• Main obstacles to wider deployment within the enterprise» Waiting for coverage, performance improvements» Cost of devices» Security concerns» Instability of device market

Source: Research forecast (2002 – Base: 50 North American companies with more than 20% mobile workforce)

Commonly used mobile applications

Remote access to email

Employee organizer functions

CRM (history, status)

Sales force enablement

Logistics apps (dispatch, scheduling)

Wireless PBX

Supply chain management (orders, inventory)

Information services (white pages, weather)

Wireless office (no fixed lines)

eCommerce transactions

1 2 3 4 5Source: Orange, user survey July 2003 (Base: 113)

3.9

3.3

3.2

2.8

2.7

2.6

2.5

2.4

2.3

2.31 = Not very important5 = Very important/critical

IT priorities and challenges in managing mobility

• Security — VPN access

• Support — end-user productivity and convenience benefits/satisfaction

» Email, personal information management (PIM)

• One-stop shopping (voice, data, Wi-Fi services, including secure VPN)

• Usage control and reporting

• Cost savings

GigaWorld 2004 session poll results

IT issues: network and information security

VPN gateway

Central corporate site

VPN gateway

Internet Web site

Remote VPN user

Internet VPN

Wi-Fi, hotelEthernet, 2-2.5-3G

Security must be broad and deep

• Authentication

• Authorization

• Administration

• Audit

Who are you?

What may you do?

Who may do what?

What happened?

Intranet servers

VPN gateway

Remote VPN user

VPN gateway

Internet

IT issues: appropriate use and privacy

PublicWeb sites

Firewall/contentfilter

Split tunnel disabled

Router

Proliferation of different access technologies to support

Ban

dw

idth

Type of access service

High

Low

Mobile Fixed

UMTS

1xRTT

GSM TDMA CDMA

OC-12+

SATELLITE

PCS

WLL

OC-3

T-3/E-3

T-1/E-1

xDSL

ISDN

POTS

CABLE

GPRSGPRS

3xRTT3xRTT

WI-Fi

WI-Fi

IT issues: support for multi-access users

VPN clienton PC Low-end

VPN gateway

Central siteVPN gateway

VPN IPSec clienton laptop

or SSL clientless

Branch-officeVPN gateway

Corporateoffice

Remotesite

Day extender

Small or homeoffice

Mobile user

InternetVPN

Agenda





Summary

• New telecom technologies/services are changing the way we think about our work environment

• They offer IT and other workers the promise of greater freedom of movement and flexibility

» Earliest returns on investment = support function jobs like help desk, customer service

» Reduces stress and turnover, including in IT (convenience, flexibility for some off-hours job functions like help desk and remote monitoring)

Common IT practices in managing mobile and remote workers

• Try to reduce number of contracts and suppliers of remote-access services

• Growing appeal of managed remote access and managed security

• Minimum support for personal devices (synchronization)

• Employee subsidies for fixed broadband home access — dial-up equivalent

• Employee subsidies for mobile services — unlikely to come close to meeting actual costs

• Force users onto the VPN versus Web-enabling applications

• Lack of written telecommuting policy; infrequent revisits

Best practices for resolving mobile and remote user issues

• Technology:

» Centralized management by IT

» Appropriate remote-access VPN platforms (internal or provider-managed)

» Content filtering

» User training (eLearning/onsite once or twice a year)

• Usage policies:

» Network/physical security, support responsibilities, appropriate use/privacy

» Written, reviewed, revised, and regularly communicated

» Formal telework/mobile work agreement

brownlee thomas, ph.d. principal analyst

Technology

remote workers challenges

mobile workers common

remote worker telecommuting

salaried workers itac

regular mobile

employers challenges

remote workerscommon

best practices