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IT managers are taking another look at their branch strategies, thanks to a number of factors. These include the desire to move to a more distributed work model featuring hotelling and increasing teleworkers, the need to support rich-media collaboration such as video, and emerging branch connectivity services based on Ethernet and wireless.
Consider, despite flat or falling IT budgets, research participants tell us that branches are again growing. On average, 33% of firms are increasing the number of branches, by an average of 5%, a turnaround from 2009 when most companies were reducing branches by an average of 3%.
Chief among drivers behind branch growth is telework and hotelling. As the tools supporting collaboration by teleworkers and remote access to enterprise applications have improved, and as broadband has continued to become more broadly and cheaply available, on average 19.7% of employees now telecommute, part or full time. Of those, 48% still have an office at some branch, 13.3% are “hotel” office users, taking an available space when they need to be on site but having no dedicated location; and 38.6% work remotely all the time. Meanwhile, to reduce real estate costs and commute times, many firms are building smaller distributed hotelling centers to enable employees to work in locations more convenient to where they live.
Overall, we see increasing use of the Internet as either a backup to or replacement for a WAN connection. About 26.1% of branches on average are connected to both WAN and Internet–supporting direct branch-to-Internet access. However, 45% of branches support Internet VPN. Users in Internet VPN branches don’t always enjoy direct Internet access, however. In many cases, the branch is using the Internet only for VPN access back to the organization’s WAN, possibly only as a dormant backup to the primary WAN link, unused except when that link fails. Especially where the Internet VPN is only a backup to dedicated WAN links, it is often provisioned across consumer-grade connectivity.
Like collaboration tools, telecommuting, and softphones, Internet VPN helps an enterprise virtualize by reducing the expense of having smaller branches in more remote locations, where consumer broadband may be more readily available than WAN connectivity.
However, it shifts significant responsibility for security to the branch, requiring Internet-facing security similar to that deployed in data centers: firewall, intrusion detection and prevention, content filtering and anti-malware, etc. In a “micro-branch” (with 10 or fewer employees) or for teleworkers, distributed security might have to be implemented via endpoint (desktop or laptop) defenses.
In other branches, distributed security may require unified threat-management appliances or other one-box security appliances, in order to keep capital and maintenance expenditures under control. As MPLS and carrier Ethernet move further into enterprises, it may also mean increasing use of carrier-based security as a service, firewall etc., in the cloud protecting Internet access through the cloud, direct to each branch.
Leading the way on this shift to the Internet are small organizations, global organizations, aggressive organizations. Among small organizations, a whopping 70.8% of branches can use an Internet VPN as a WAN alternative, compared to 39.5% and 32.8% among midsized and larger organizations. Clearly one factor here is the fact that consumer Internet connectivity, via DSL or cable modem, is very inexpensive compared to provisioning redundant WAN links.
Among organizations operating globally, 51.6% of branches can use an Internet VPN back to a data center, compared with only 37.3% for organizations operating exclusively inside the United States.
Finally, we see growing interest in using emerging services such as Ethernet and 3G/4G data services to support branch needs, improve resiliency, and lower costs.
IT managers should take another look at their branch strategies and make sure IT closely aligns with enterprise plans for distributed, virtual, and hotelling workers. Look for opportunities to save money while meeting ever-increasing demand for remote collaboration.
