Are VPNs ready for prime time? Yes, for remote access

For almost a year, major networking vendors and a slew of start-ups have touted the benefits of virtual private networks. Essentially, VPN technology allows you to build extranets, which enable you to use the Internet for private communication, commerce and collaboration.

Let's be honest - VPNs will not replace corporate WANs in the near future. However, there are certain applications for which VPNs make sense today.

Initially, remote access is the most appropriate enterprise application for VPNs. Corporations can save $1 million per year per 1,000 users by implementing an extranet. Because users always dial in to a local ISP, access charges, such as long-distance and toll-free phone charges, are eliminated. In addition, having fewer devices on the network significantly reduces management and capital costs.

Major corporations such as American Airlines/Sabre Labs and 3M Corp. have built extranets. In doing so, they have not only reduced costs by at least $1,000 per user per year over their old remote access system, but have also quickly and easily provided mobile employees, business partners and customers with access to their corporate resources.

In addition to saving you money, VPNs and extranets can eliminate the headache of managing modem racks. With the right extranet access products, modem hassles can be outsourced to a service provider, freeing you to concentrate on business issues that contribute to your company's bottom line.

Furthermore, VPNs and extranets are more scalable than traditional remote access solutions. Currently, every time you want to add more remote users, you have to buy more modems and add T-1 lines. This is expensive, time consuming and a management nuisance. With an extranet, new users, including business partners, can be added easily, without expensive and complex equipment upgrades.

Yet, corporations will not abandon their existing networking infrastructures entirely and shift remote access, collaboration and electronic commerce applications to the Internet all at once. In time, these and other key applications will migrate to the Internet. Each application that moves to the Internet will increase your savings.

Supply chain management, for example, will become more efficient as extranet links between suppliers and buyers improve the process. Direct links between retailers and suppliers ensure more precise inventory control. By creating open procedures between business partners, extranets extend electronic commerce beyond online transactions.

It is important to note that the Internet that will support these mission-critical applications is not the wild and woolly Internet, but rather the business-class Internet. Top-tier service providers such as AT&T, Concentric, MCI, Sprint and UUNet will offer the quality of service and service-level agreements corporations will demand to shift business applications to the Internet.

Extranets and VPNs are a viable alternative to traditional remote access. All corporations may not be ready to move their entire supply chain to the Internet backbone immediately - but the technology exists today, and further innovations will continue to be available for secure, scalable and manageable extranet access.

The VPNs: Ready for Prime Time? forum.

Pincince is vice president, business development, at Bay Networks, Inc. in Billerica, Mass. He can be reached at (978) 916-0731 or at tom_pincince@baynetworks.com.