Uneasy access: Companies challenged with connecting in remote parts of the globe

If providing laptops and bandwidth for employees located within an urban center in America can be tough, imagine doing it in the oil fields of Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

Operating a network in Kazakhstan, a country bordering China and Russia, is just one thing that Nigel Fletcher, mobile segment manager at the U.K. gas-exploration firm BG Group, thinks about in his job to make sure mobile workers get access to the corporate network. BG Group has about 4,000 employees, 60% of whom are outside of Britain, many on ceaseless travel to distant locations around the globe.

"We have a group of about 500 engineers who are rarely in one place for more than a few weeks," Fletcher says. Often, remote access really does mean remote.

While BG Group has a WAN supplied by Equant in the U.S. and Europe, extending network access to mobile workers in many parts of the world is a challenge because modern telecom and the Internet can be hard to come by.

But it's critical to give on-the-go executives and engineers access to internal applications, such as SAP or Microsoft Exchange, so they can do their jobs, Fletcher says.

Kazakhstan, which has emerged as an important area for oil-exploration firms that also include Chevron ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch/Shell, doesn't have a substantially built-out telecom infrastructure. So several of the firms banded together to build a shared gigabit-fiber network with a satellite link to Moscow as the nearest point of presence. "We pooled our resources," Fletcher says.

BG Group also relies on satellite access to connect offices in urban areas such as Singapore and Mumbai, India, to its landline corporate network. While BG Group requires use of a VPN connection for secure access via remote laptop, the company earlier this year expanded its security strategy through use of the iPass endpoint management software.

The iPass software client combines policy enforcement of VPN, anti-virus and patch management with options for use of the iPass Corporate Access Service. This service offers secure dial-up, broadband connections or wireless access to thousands of Wi-Fi hot spots in airports, cafes and hotel LANs in more than 50 countries.

Through agreements with providers that include China Telecom and NTT in Japan, plus about 300 other providers globally, the iPass Corporate Access Service allows network access via a single logon, with itemized billing for the corporate IT department.

"It was a strategic decision for us for this," Fletcher says. In some areas of the world, such as Central Asia, the Wi-Fi hot spots in cafes and airports provide the best opportunities for engineers to get network access when they are traveling.

BG Group regards iPass as a less-expensive replacement for long-distance calls via remote access server into the intranet. IPass is being rolled out to BG Group employees in South America, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. Third-party systems integrator ETT, which operates a multilingual round-the-clock operations center in London, is providing global support.