The Democratic National Convention is in my home state this year. Many of my downtown Denver customers and friends have worked diligently over the past couple months to setup a remote access teleworker solution for their businesses. Projects and timetables were linked to the coming of the DNC, surprise, surprise. Downtown Denver businesses are worried that their employees might not be able to commute in for work everyday. Things like increase in traffic, closings of streets due to motorcades, and the possibility of a perimeter lockdown of the City due to security incidents or threats are all top of mind. This has caused many businesses to look to teleworker solutions as a way to have employees work from home during the DNC and beyond.
The scope of these teleworker solutions varies from business to business but universally will include the ability for a home worker to access their email and business critical applications. Some businesses, using the DNC as a catalyst, are taking a more long term approach and rolling out VPN routers and IP telephony (IPT) to home offices in an effort to cut voice costs and provide employees the same experience they have at the office. See my previous blog for details on this type of solution. Adding IPT to the teleworker solution allows workers to have their same desk phone number at their home office too, also called number portability. This makes the work from home experience more seamless to both the end user and callers.
IPSEC VPN and SSLVPN have been the technology of choice for businesses creating a teleworker solution. But other technologies that are complementary to IPSEC and SSL VPNs, like NAC and client side certificates, are also being deployed. Additionally, I have seen several IPSEC VPN customers use the DNC as the basis for them to accelerate their SSLVPN plans. One such customer is Johns Manville (JM).
According to Jeremy Sing, Manager of Network Soutions, “JM has partnered with Cisco to offer a Web-based VPN solution for employees who work remotely or are traveling. This solution will likely be utilized during the DNC by employees who work from home. We will offer the opportunity for some employees from our downtown Denver location to work from home.” When asked what the greatest challenge JM sees as a result of the DNC coming to Denver, Jeremy responded, “The greatest challenge is the possible global impact to our business if employees experience significant commuter disruptions or have problems accessing our world headquarters due to elevated security risks. We are continuing to assess these issues. We have moved up the timeline to roll out the new Web-based VPN solution to approximately 4000 JM laptops. As a result, we have modified our IDS and IPS detective systems to ensure network segments are being monitored appropriately.”
The potential risk of business disruption due to hosting the Democratic National Convention has forced some downtown Denver businesses to adopt a remote access and work from home strategy/solution that they otherwise might have passed on. It will be interesting to see if the businesses that were dragged kicking and screaming into supporting a teleworker solution will decide to turn it off after the convention is over or continue to use it. Given that some companies are choosing to have most of their downtown employees work from home during the several days of the DNC, this experience has the potential to change some corporate cultures around this subject. It will provide not only end-users a chance to get a feel for working from home, but also provide management with a sense for the impacts (positive and negative) that a teleworker program has. Many IT departments understand the culture changing opportunity they have been entrusted with; and to that end are doing more than just due diligence to ensure their teleworker solution deploys without a hitch.
Most employees would favor the opportunity to work from home occasionally. For some, the DNC just might provide the catalyst through which that opportunity becomes a reality. If you are a Denver business, how has the DNC affected your teleworker plans? Any others have similar experiences to share about when your hometown hosted a large convention recently?
A big thank you to Jeremy Sing and JM for sharing your insights for this blog. The opinions expressed in this article are my own and not those of my employer
