Remote access
Remote access is all about giving your staff access to the
information and services they need. Whether your business has one
office or many offices around Australia or the world, remote access
technologies can connect your people to your information. There are
many different technologies and solutions which form part of
Kiandra's remote access strategies - from pure connectivity
solutions connecting offices, to secure authentication mechanisms
to control access into your network from the internet, and to the
intelligent sharing of data and applications depending on location,
user and access method.
How Kiandra delivers
Broadly speaking, we break down remote access strategies into
two main considerations; how do I connect to the infrastructure,
and what do I get access to once I'm connected?
How do I connect? In the case of head office / branch office
connectivity we may implement a broadband point-to-point or
point-to-multipoint service to allow data to travel between the
sites. This can be the same for users who wish to work from home,
except in this case we would typically use a home internet service
(ADSL etc) to connect to the office. In the case of a remote worker
who needs to connect to the business network while on the road, we
may use a mobile broadband solution such as Telstra NextG mobile
broadband with a secure authentication technology such as RSA
SecurID two-factor authentication to grant secure access to
sensitive business data. Or, we can use Citrix Access Gateway for
secure access to network resources from the internet (using Secure
Sockets Layers, or SSL technologies), without using traditional
virtual private networks (VPNs) which present security risks.
What do I get access to? This depends entirely on what the
business needs to do and what's been set up inside the network. If
the business needs to share access to files between offices, then
it may be appropriate to implement a centralised solution and share
the data and applications from a server or servers in that
location. To do this we'd use application virtualisation
technologies like Citrix XenApp or Microsoft Terminal Services to
efficiently deliver applications to remote users. This is called
server-based computing.
Or the nature of the business may lend itself more suited to a
distributed model, and instead of centralising data, we synchronise
it between sites perhaps using a technologies built into Microsoft
Windows Server 2003 R2 known as Distributed File Services (DFS).
DFS is useful in this model as it provides fast access for each
user when normal conditions prevail, and allows for automatic
failover to available resources if one node in the DFS environment
fails (such as a local server failure - in this case, the DFS
infrastructure would fail over to the next available site).
Access to email and internal websites such as intranets and
Microsoft SharePoint sites is generally easy to provide using
built-in technologies.
Experience and certifications
Kiandra has significant experience in analysing remote access
requirements and in the design and implementation the necessary
infrastructure and solutions to support businesses of all sizes;
from single work-from-home scenarios, to large multi-site national
businesses with diverse application and access requirements.
Flexible and secure mobile solutions can also be implemented,
further extending the reach of your business and improving worker
efficiencies.