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About 90% of employees today work away from their company's headquarters, on average, and 40% work at a remote location, away from their supervisors. What technologies do you need to have in place to ensure that those employees are at their most productive? This weekly alert by Nemertes Research will explore answers to that question, covering collaboration technologies, WAN optimization strategies, network performance management and other issues vital to network managers and CIOs whose companies have branch offices and remote workers. The alert also includes the latest remote office news headlines on NetworkWorld.com.

Consolidated devices: When it’s time to use them

When does it make sense to use consolidated devices?

Branch Office Best Practices Newsletter  By Robin Gareiss, Network World, 03/21/06

The options are broadening for all-in-one devices for the branch office. But the question is not so much whether to use these tools - it’s whose tools to use and when?

This week, Nortel will make its secure router product line available (based on technology from the Tasman acquisition). Last month, NetDevices started selling its services gateway for small branch offices, and Juniper announced its unified threat management devices.

Vendors are rightfully focusing on creating, enhancing, and sizing consolidated devices for branch offices. As we speak to IT executives, we see many shifting their focus from the data center to the branch office. Their data center consolidation projects are well underway or winding down, and now they need to focus on how to deliver predictable application and network performance to branch office employees.

Back to the questions at hand: When does it make sense to use consolidated devices? For any new location, it’s a no-brainer. Like newer technologies such as VoIP, the business case is compelling. Rather than installing a separate firewall, router, switch, network optimization device, and VPN, companies can save on hardware, as well as the operational costs for installation and ongoing management.

NetDevice’s SG-4, for example, performs firewall, IDS/IPS, VPN, switching, and routing functions for a list price of about $8,000. When totaled as point products, capital costs could be $10,000 or more, depending on brands or models. Separately, each point product would take about four to six hours to install - that's two to three times longer than it would take to install a consolidated device. It doesn’t take long to see the value.

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