BIOS: Technology Means Business

Today’s company deploy remote support services for fast, reliable and secure communications to ensure that company’s resources and information are shared properly wherever their offices or locations are. That is why IPSec VPN, and later on, SSL VPN are getting hot in market.

But if you are considering on situations like providing customer support when both you and your customer are out of office, modifying the layout of company brochure at last minute while your art designer is working at print house, or pushing your boss to approve your marketing budget via a global marketing strategy meeting while he/she is staying in hotel room at Paris, then Peer to Peer (P2P) SSL VPN would be the solution!

IPSec VPN performs well at site-to-site connectivity. Users at geographically distributed branch offices work as if they were logging at the corporate headquarter, however, off-site remote users cannot benefit from it. The advanced IPSec VPN tries to allow remote users to access at-site LAN users. But due to IPSec VPN’s architecture, the remote user can see all devices in LAN with no authority limitation while they access LAN. This would cause the risk of company information management.

Along with the rapid growth of remote users, SSL VPN is getting popular recently. SSL VPN complements IPSec VPN solutions by allowing remote users to access corporate network resources with certain authority management. The fatal cause to SSL VPN is that it only allows remote users to access LAN users but not LAN to remote users. Sometimes, this ‘one-way’ solution sounds ambiguous in real business world.

For example, SSL VPN allows remote users access network, consequently it provides a new feature that allowing off-site remote users to control at-site corporate users’ desktops. But in most business cases, company requires at-site corporate users to provide customer support to off-site remote customers by controlling customers’ desktops. However, this is beyond SSL VPN solution, not to mention remote users to access other remote users.

In order to make smooth communications among at-site staffs, travelling staffs and customers, companies usually deploy at least one of IPSec VPN or SSL VPN, plus remote desktop control services. This becomes a financial and IT managing burden, and turns that only larger companies can afford it. Good news is that the lately launched Peer to Peer SSL VPN breaks through previous VPN’s access limitation by allowing users to access each other wherever they are at-site or off-site, and provides all-in-one remote services. Even small and middle size company can afford to deploy the services easily.

The P2P SSL VPN technology establishes a secure tunnel from one endpoint to another. This great stride makes direct connections among LAN-to-LAN, LAN-to Mobile, Mobile-to-LAN, and Mobile-to-Mobile as possible. Meanwhile, since all the connectivity are between one endpoint to another with no need of passing through the server or gateway, P2P SSL VPN minimises the possibility of traffic bottleneck, maximises the utilisation of bandwidth and commits an aggregate throughput.

The applications of P2P SSL VPN enable users to experience virtual office and customer support from anywhere to anywhere. The virtual network neighbourhood function allows you to browse other users via a window screen. You can remote access those you can browse. Just double click on other user’s icon, you may share other user’s resources, or remote access file server directly for the file sharing function, as long as you have the authority.

The remote control function works well, along with chat (or instant message) and call. If more than two users are required to join the communication, a meeting room is ready for you. The real time collaboration function allows multi-users co-working at same time. Users at different locations can review the same screen at their own computer desktop to edit, draw, or even program at the same screen on the same file at real time. P2P SSL VPN brings a ‘real’ virtual office and ‘real’ virtual customer support environment to market. You may work from anywhere, work with others at anywhere, and provide customer support to anywhere. And this declares a new era of remote sharing services!