Control remote access costs

If you don’t draft tighter remote worker policies and network access controls, you’ll see remote worker costs increase by five to 10 times. That’s the word from Gartner, which held its Symposium/ITxpo conference last week.

(In related news, analysts announced at the show that IT will waste $100 billion on unnecessary network spending over the next five years.)

Unknown costs need to be reined in. Gartner forecasts those to triple without centralized management by 2008, while the known costs of centrally supporting remote access devices will double.

“The problem lies in the fact that different remote access technologies have been managed by different groups in the company, and new technologies are cropping up that no one is managing,” says Eric Paulak, managing vice president at Gartner. “Many costs get buried in the company…These costs could be controlled if they were part of a centrally managed remote access service.”

Gartner says some network leaders fear such a move, however, because the hidden costs that business units bore will turn into a known cost that the networking or IT department has to pay. As a result, IT costs may increase. However, this should lower overall corporate costs by up to 40%, according to Paulak.

Consider moving towards more aggregated services, especially for basic connectivity, VPNs and security services. Gartner suggests starting with the power user groups that rely the most on remote access.