Telework for Dummies

Pat Hurley

• To discover flexibility in where and when you do your job

• How teleworking benefits employees

• How to save commuting time and money

• How to maximize productivity for you and your organization

Learn:

TeleworkDell Special Edition

Making Everything Easier!™

Open the book and find:

• Ways to improve work/life balance

• Numerous benefits for your organization

• How technology helps you telework

• How Dell helps with your telework solutions

ISBN: 978-1-118-13917-2Not for resale

Go to Dummies.com®

for videos, step-by-step examples, how-to articles, or to shop!

A number of accessibility, security, and policy considerations exist that need evaluating before beginning a telework initiative. And with Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition, you find out what those are. Open the book and find out how to implement a telework initiative and where to begin. This minibook gives you the background you need to understand and move your telework program forward.

• Understand exactly what telework is — how does it fit into your organization

• Go green — discover the environmental benefits of telework

• Save money — unearth the economic benefits of telework and increase your bottom line

• Securely connect your mobile workforce — make technology work for you

Find out the ways that telework benefits your company and your employees

These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.

TeleworkFOR

DUMmIES‰

DELL SPECIAL EDITION

by Pat Hurley

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Telework For Dummies®, Dell Special EditionPublished byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

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Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

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Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

About This Book ........................................................................ 1How This Book Is Organized .................................................... 2

Chapter 1: Understanding What Telework Is (And Isn’t) ..................................................................... 2

Chapter 2: Realizing the Benefits of Telework ............. 2Chapter 3: Taking Stock of Telework Technology ....... 3Chapter 4: Making the VPN and Virtualization Desktop Decision ......................................................... 3Chapter 5: Why Turn to Dell for your

Telework Solutions? .................................................... 3Case Study A: Adobe’s Approach: Telework

and Continuity of Operations .................................... 4Case Study B: F5’s Approach: Secure, Accelerated

Application Access for Remote Users ...................... 4Case Study C: LifeSize’s Approach: Bringing

High-Def Video to Telework ........................................ 4Icons Used in This Book ............................................................ 5

Chapter 1: Understanding What Telework Is (And Isn’t) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

Looking at What Telework Is .................................................... 7An organization-wide IT initiative .................................. 8A new way of doing business ......................................... 9Being “on the network” no matter

where your desk is ....................................................... 9Figuring Out What Telework Isn’t .......................................... 10

Mobile access ................................................................. 10“Road warrior” access................................................... 11Bringing the laptop home at night ............................... 11

Chapter 2: Realizing the Benefits of Telework . . . . . . .13

Telework Is Good for Workers ............................................... 14Benefits to the employees themselves ....................... 14

Flexibility .......................................................... 15Reduced commute time ................................. 15Financial and environmental ......................... 15

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Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition ivFamily time ....................................................... 16Disabled workers ............................................ 17

Benefits to employers of teleworkers ......................... 17Telework Benefits the Environment ...................................... 18

Making a smaller carbon footprint .............................. 18Maintaining less office space and equipment ............ 18

Telework Saves and Makes Money ........................................ 19Telework Prepares You for the Unexpected ........................ 21

Chapter 3: Taking Stock of Telework Technology . . . .23

Understanding Your Telework Requirements...................... 24Comparing Different Approaches to Telework Security ..... 26

Understanding Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) ...... 28VPN pieces and parts ..................................... 28Handling the “Data at Rest” ........................... 29

Moving to desktop virtualization ................................. 31Determining If You Should Do It Yourself ............................. 33

Chapter 4: Making the VPN and Desktop Virtualization Decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35

Understanding Where VPN Is Required ................................ 35Quickly and easily enables remote connection ......... 36Provides secure communication ................................. 36Is better for VoIP ............................................................ 37Has a shorter learning curve ........................................ 37

Finding a Fit for Desktop Virtualization ................................ 37Storage ............................................................................ 38Device flexibility ........................................................... 38Disaster recovery and data assurance........................ 39Systems management .................................................... 39Simpler in the long run.................................................. 39Lower support help desk costs.................................... 39Give users only what they need, when

they need it ................................................................. 40Lower software costs .................................................... 40

Chapter 5: Why Dell for Your Telework Solutions? . . .41

Dell and Telework: A Great Match ......................................... 41Dell Computing Solutions for Your Teleworkers ................. 42

Laptops ........................................................................... 42Software .......................................................................... 43

How Dell Handles Virtualization ............................................ 44Partnering with Dell on Telework Initiatives ........................ 46

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Table of Contents vCase Study A: Adobe’s Approach: Telework

and Continuity of Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

Why Telework Is Catching On in Government .................... 48Issues in Telework .................................................................. 50How Adobe Solutions Enable Telework ............................... 50

Case Study B: F5’s Approach: Secure, Accelerated Application Access for Remote Users . . . . . . . . . . . .53

Delivering the Data Securely .................................................. 54Application Delivery Made Easy ............................................ 55

Availability ...................................................................... 55Security ........................................................................... 55

Value of Access ........................................................................ 57Using resources efficiently ........................................... 57Optimization ................................................................... 58

How BIG-IP Makes It Happen .................................................. 59

Case Study C: LifeSize’s Approach: Bringing High-Def Video to Telework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61

Why High-Definition Video? .................................................... 62Who Is LifeSize? ........................................................................ 64An HD Video Case Study: Measuring the Impact

in Dollars ............................................................................... 65

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Introduction

For a variety of reasons, ranging from employee quality of life, environmental, economic and even legal, organiza-

tions of all sizes and types are beginning to seriously explore offering telework options to their employees. Telework is simply the act of giving employees flexibility in terms of where and often when they perform their work duties.

More and more workers spend their day in front of a com-puter and a phone and the advent of ubiquitous broadband networking, portable computing devices, and new network-centric applications means that it doesn’t really matter where someone is when she’s doing her job.

That doesn’t mean, however, that you can just send some-one home with a laptop and turn them into a teleworker. Numerous accessibility, security, and policy considerations exist that need evaluating before beginning a telework initia-tive. Those considerations and choices are what Telework For Dummies is all about.

About This BookTelework For Dummies isn’t written for members of an orga-nization’s IT staff looking for deep technical knowledge and detailed technical instructions for architecting and designing a telework network — there are plenty of 600 page technical books for those purposes. Instead, you’ll find that Telework For Dummies is designed for the non-technical folks — executives, managers, HR staff, and so on — who want to (or have to) learn more about implementing a telework initiative and who don’t know where to begin. This minibook gives you the background you need to understand and move your telework program forward.

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Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 2

How This Book Is OrganizedTelework For Dummies is organized into five chapters and three case studies. As is the case in any For Dummies book, each of these chapters is self-contained, so you don’t need to read the book in its entirety from front to back — if you see a chapter that you already know everything about, feel free to skip it. Whenever a complex topic from another chapter is raised, you get a reference to that chapter — no need to spend your time digging around in the table of contents.

Chapter 1: Understanding What Telework Is (And Isn’t)Chapter 1 provides an overview of the topic at hand: namely telework. You start by defining a number of things that are related to telework (like providing access to mobile work-forces and “road warriors”) and then dive into what telework really is. This chapter helps you understand exactly what tele-work is and how it may fit into your organization.

Chapter 2: Realizing the Benefits of TeleworkChapter 2 examines the benefits of telework (spoiler alert: there are a lot). First, you examine the benefits for employees, which range from an improved work/life balance to higher productivity. Then you discover the environmental benefits of telework — among other things, telework saves a lot of gas. Next you look into the legal and regulatory issues that are pushing organizations into telework whether or not they’re ready. Finally, you see the economic benefits of telework to the organization: Telework can save you money and increase the bottom line.



Introduction 3

Chapter 3: Taking Stock of Telework TechnologyA number of cultural aspects to telework exist (for example, training managers to deal with remote workers), but the biggest factor, the one that underlies and supports any tele-work initiative is technology. Without a robust and secure infrastructure, telework just won’t work. Chapter 3 discusses the technological requirements of any telework effort. You discover the two main technologies contenders for telework: Virtual Provider Network (VPN) and virtualization.

Chapter 4: Making the VPN and Desktop Virtualization DecisionChapter 4 digs deeper into VPN and virtualization decisions that organizations must make as they launch telework. You learn about VPN, the older, more familiar yet still extremely useful telework option. Then you find out more about virtu-alization and look at the short- and long-term benefits it can offer. By the time you’re done with this chapter, you should know enough to begin making an informed decision based on the best technology for your organization.

Chapter 5: Why Dell for Your Telework Solutions?Most enterprises do not have core competencies in the tech-nologies that are required for a successful telework program. Therefore many will turn to trusted vendors for help.

Chapter 5 talks about how Dell can help with this process. Dell offers more than just computers and related equipment (though they do indeed offer that stuff too!). Dell offers secu-rity software and Dell Desktop Virtualization Solutions (DDVS) product offerings.



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 4DDVS offers a complete end-to-end solution for deploying virtualized desktop computing systems for teleworkers (and more). Dell can provide a services component, ranging from consultative services to a completely outsourced solution hosted and managed by Dell.

Case Study A: Adobe’s Approach: Telework and Continuity of Operations This case study discusses some key drivers for telework — including the all important (particularly for government agen-cies) continuity of operations. Some particular issues arise when telework takes place. You discover how Adobe Systems, through platforms such as Adobe Connect and Acrobat Pro, can satisfy those drivers and solve those issues.

Case Study B: F5’s Approach: Secure, Accelerated Application Access for Remote UsersTelework is a fundamentally different way of approaching and providing network services — it moves people off the Local Access Network (LAN) and onto public networks, far away from IT staff and outside of the security of the network firewall. This study talks about two big issues that IT must deal with during this transition: security and performance. Solutions are available from F5 Networks and you see how they can provide security, control, scalability, and the appli-cation acceleration needed to support your teleworkers.

Case Study C: LifeSize’s Approach: Bringing High-Def Video to TeleworkTelework allows workers to do their jobs pretty much any-where in the world. That’s a good thing. But it’s also a bad thing because it takes away the face-to-face interaction that



Introduction 5workers enjoy when they’re together in an office. This case study talks about how high-definition (HD) video conferenc-ing and collaboration can make colleagues a continent apart “feel” like they’re in the same room. You look at the need for video collaboration and get introduced to LifeSize, an innova-tor and leading vendor of HD video products. You discover the keys to successfully implementing HD video and read a case study demonstrating the return on investment (ROI) of HD video collaboration.

Icons Used in This BookThis book calls out important bits of information with icons on the left margin of the page. You’ll find four such icons in the book:

The tip icon points out a bit of information that aids in your understanding of a topic or provides a little bit of extra infor-mation that perhaps isn’t 100 percent necessary, but which broadens your understanding of what you’ve just read.

This is where you need to pay attention. The remember icon points out a crucial part of the text — a point that you should lock away in your memory because you’ll need to know it again in the future.

This icon is used when we mention something that you don’t need to spend a lot of time understanding — and which we’re not going to expend a lot of words explaining — but which is a technical term or concept that you might hear from (or men-tion to) your IT staff when discussing your telework initiative.

This icon highlights pieces of information that can be costly or damaging to your business if you don’t pay close attention.



Chapter 1

Understanding What Telework Is (And Isn’t)

In This Chapter▶ Defining telework

▶ Discovering the myths of telework

Telework is a big deal these days, for many reasons —employee satisfaction, environmental concerns, financial

benefits, and even legal requirements — but before I can talk about telework, it makes sense to figure out exactly what the term telework means.

Unsurprisingly, telework is a rather broad term that can — and does — mean different things to different people. And that’s okay because every organization has different working environments, different technical and security needs, and a different culture, and each of these factors shape the kind of teleworking policies and programs that organizations will implement.

Looking at What Telework IsTelework is, in its essence, a fundamental change in the rela-tionship between employees and place by using telecommu-nications technologies to allow employees to work anywhere without impacting their ability to communicate and collabo-rate with their coworkers.

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Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 8Telework doesn’t mean that everyone abandons their offices full-time and works in their pajamas from home every day — though for some organizations it means exactly that — but it does mean that an organization allows workers — within the bounds of well-defined policies — some flexibility regarding where and (often) when they work.

The where could be a home office a few miles away from the actual office (in a typical scenario) or from a mountain cabin a thousand miles away (in a long-distance telework scenario), and the when could be 9 to 5 or 5 to 9. When could also be Monday through Friday or it could be only every other Thursday. This flexibility — within the needs and policies of the organization — is the hallmark of telework.

Obviously not every employee can telework (for example, receptionists or hands-on workers like medical profession-als), but an ever-increasing percentage of most organizations’ workforces can successfully telework at least part of the time.

In Chapter 2, I talk about why you should consider telework a good thing for your workers, despite reservations you may have about losing control of your employees.

An organization-wide IT initiativeEnabling an official telework option (as opposed to the casual telework that’s probably already happening within your organization) is an organization-wide effort for your IT department — and many other departments, such as human resources, finance, accounting, security, compliance, and more.

A successful telework initiative requires your organization to look deeply into the following:

✓ Your IT and networking infrastructure and policies

✓ Your security policies

✓ The actual hardware and software you use for worker productivity

✓ Your HR and management policies that define how you measure worker productivity, performance, and behavior



Chapter 1: Understanding What Telework Is (And Isn’t) 9In other words, you can’t just tell your CIO or IT manager to “turn on” teleworking without thinking through all the poten-tial changes and consequences that telework brings to your organization.

Don’t be scared by the word consequences. On the contrary, most organizations that implement teleworking find that the benefits outweigh the costs. But a clear and intelligent consid-eration of all the aspects of telework makes for a faster and easier transition.

A new way of doing businessTelework really and truly is a new way of doing business. Workers will not always be within the immediate purview of their supervisors. Their performance may not be easily measured by observing what they’re doing, but rather by evaluating the outcome of their work. Managers who are used to popping by their direct reports’ cubicles and peering over their shoulders at the documents they’re working on will no longer be able to do so — at least not on the days those direct reports are teleworking.

Similarly, teleworkers can’t walk to a colleague’s desk to ask a question or conduct an ad hoc brainstorming session, and they may not always be physically present at staff meetings. So both sides of the equation — management and workers — must adapt to new ways of communicating and collaborating to remain successful and productive.

Being “on the network” no matter where your desk isTechnology, in the form of secured high-speed Internet access to the office network and productivity/collaboration soft-ware that lets workers in physically disparate locations work “together” is the key to successful telework. Teleworkers need to “feel” as if they’re siting at their desks in the office no matter where their desks are, and they need to be able to access the same applications and data that they could access in your organization’s physical offices.




One of the first industry segments to adopt telework was call centers; with a high-speed cable or DSL internet connection, call center employees could easily access VoIP connections and remotely access customer relationship management (CRM) software packages that let them queue and log their calls. All they needed was a PC, a headset, and an Internet connection.

With today’s more advanced virtual private network (VPN) and virtualization technologies, faster (and cheaper and better) notebook computers, and ubiquitous broadband, almost any worker can securely and efficiently work remotely.

Discover more details about VPN and virtualization and how they can provide a secure teleworking IT environment for employees in Chapter 3.

Figuring Out What Telework Isn’tIn this section, you examine some scenarios that share many characteristics with telework — and which may utilize and benefit from many of the technical and policy aspects of telework — but which aren’t quite telework. In other words, telework goes beyond these scenarios to be a more organization-wide effort, but the work you put into your telework initiative helps your organization deal with these scenarios — a nice added benefit!

These work scenarios still fit into the overall telework umbrella, and the hardware, software, network, and security decisions that you may make for your organization’s overall telework strategy affects how your organization and employ-ees work in these situations.

Mobile accessIn present day, we’re pretty well along the road of the “mobile revolution.”

According to recent statistics, about 65 million Americans own a smartphone — defined as an advanced mobile phone with PC-like capabilities for web browsing, e-mail, multimedia,



Chapter 1: Understanding What Telework Is (And Isn’t) 11and other applications. Most regular “feature” phones have at least rudimentary e-mail capabilities, and tens of millions of people own Android or iOS tablet devices.

Whether those devices are employee-owned or provided by the organization, employees are going to want — make that demand — to use them for work-related purposes. They may want to access e-mail on-the-go, at any time, or they may want to use apps on their devices to actually do work with docu-ments or cloud-based services, such as SalesForce.

This isn’t telework, but supporting users’ desires and demands to do these things are something your telework initiatives should take into account.

“Road warrior” accessBeyond casual use of mobile devices by employees, many organizations have an army of employees — the sales force, on-site technicians, perhaps even a literal army — who don’t spend their typical day in any office. Again, while this mobile workforce of “road warriors” can be part of a teleworking ini-tiative, this isn’t a part of the broader telework initiative, one in which people who don’t have to work remotely as a part of their job requirements do so anyway.

Bringing the laptop home at nightYou may have experienced the bringing-your-work-home-with-you scenario. Employees of all levels have been doing this — out of necessity or maybe just because they love their jobs — for years. In many cases, this has been done out-side the purview of IT and a corporation’s security policies. Whether it’s an employee bringing a laptop home to finish a report or a staffer putting some files on a USB flash drive to review over the weekend, this happens (and has been hap-pening) all the time.

This kind of casual and unofficial telework is also not tele-work, but it is something that a proper telework strategy can make more secure, effective, and convenient for both your employees and organization.



Chapter 2

Realizing the Benefits of Telework

In This Chapter▶ Understanding telework employee benefits

▶ Saving the Earth through telework

▶ Impacting the bottom line with telework

▶ Preparing for the unexpected

Beginning a telework initiative can be a scary thing for many organizations as they try to come to grips with

the perceived loss of control and immediate supervision of employees who will no longer be physically present for man-agers to “reach out and touch.” The right mixture of policies and technology can go a very long way toward addressing those concerns.

More importantly, the benefits of telework can far outweigh any perceived downsides. In fact, telework can provide a host of benefits to your employees, community, the environment, and your budget.

For many organizations, telework is the law: The Federal gov-ernment put into law the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 in December 2010. Under this law, executive agencies are required to

✓ Establish telework policies

✓ Designate a Telework Managing Officer to oversee tele-work in each agency or department

✓ Determine employee eligibility for telework



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 14 ✓ Notify all employees of their eligibility

✓ Establish telework training programs for workers and managers

✓ Integrate telework into their Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP)

✓ Provide yearly progress reports to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)

Many state and local governments have enacted similar regu-lations and initiatives within their own purviews.

Telework Is Good for WorkersThe common perception about telework is that it mainly bene-fits your employees — after all, they don’t have to get dressed up and drag themselves into the office every day. That per-ception is half right. Telework is a great benefit for employees, but not just because they get to work in their pajamas or out by the pool.

In fact, the benefits that telework provides employees tend to flow back and benefit the organization itself, because telework makes for less stressed, happier, and more productive work-ers. Among the many employee benefits of telework include the areas covered in the following sections.

Benefits to the employees themselvesTelework benefits those who telework directly and it benefits their employers — both indirectly (because they have happier employees) and directly (through improved productivity). In this section you look at the benefits that the employees them-selves derive from telework. In the following section we talk about how telework benefits their employers.

These employee benefits make for happier, less stressed, and more available workers, so they each can (as has been veri-fied in survey after survey) provide an organization with more productive workers!



Chapter 2: Realizing the Benefits of Telework 15

FlexibilityThe most obvious benefit of telework is that it offers employ-ees increased flexibility in terms of how, when, and where they work. Your office policies define exactly how flexible an employee’s work schedule and environment are, but generally teleworkers enjoy the ability to be more in control of their days and their schedules. So the life/work balance that eludes so many workers is easier to maintain.

Reduced commute timeThis factor is huge for many employees. The average employee, according to government statistics, spends nearly a half hour each way commuting to work. And that’s just the average. In larger, more congested cities that time can be easily doubled. In fact, most workers in the U.S. spend more time commuting than they do on vacation in the average year! Telework gives employees a big chunk of their lives and time back that they can use to be more productive and get more work done.

Financial and environmentalYou discover more about the specifics of the environmental impact of telework in the following section, and those impacts have a direct and additional impact that benefits workers: the financial savings that a worker reaps skipping the daily commute to the office. This benefit could be in the form of reduced fuel and maintenance costs for vehicles, reduced parking expenses, or reduced costs for public transportation that, because of the recent economic downturn and subse-quent reduction in government revenues, have been rising in many areas of the country.

Beyond the obvious costs savings, other less obvious reduced expenses exist:

✓ Dry cleaning: Your employees don’t have to wear a suit to the office when they work from home.

✓ Reduced wardrobe expenses: Not only do employees not need to dry clean their suits more often — they prob-ably need to buy fewer!

✓ Reduced childcare needs: While telework doesn’t usually mix well with the care of very young children (preschoolers and infants) without some very strict pre-coordination, it can be a boon for parents of older kids



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 16who otherwise may need to hire babysitters, pay for before/after school programs, or simply worry that their kids made it home on time.

✓ Dining out: Workers can skip the morning coffee on the way to work by making their own at home. They may eat fewer meals out as the kitchen is probably just a few feet away.

When you put all these together, telework ends up putting sig-nificant dollars back in employees’ pockets without adding to the payroll budget.

Family timeTeleworkers simply have more time with their families, because they spend more time at home and less in the work-place and on the commute. People who can take advantage of teleworking tend to simply be able to spend more time with their families because they’re at home more than in the office. They can

✓ Be home when the kids leave for or get home from school

✓ Be able to have lunch with a spouse, partner, or child

✓ Spend dinnertime with their family

✓ Schedule home service calls during their teleworking hours

There’s a very delicate balance required for telework pro-grams for parents, particularly for parents of pre-school aged children who require more or less constant supervision during the day. Some organizations (for example, Federal government telework regulations) have some pretty specific guidelines about how this scenario plays out, as it can be impossible for a parent to do a full day’s work and care for younger children. Such situations should be well-thought-out and spelled out in the organizational telework policies and also thoroughly discussed and monitored with employees. For example, a reduced time (a 50 percent full-time equiva-lent) working plan may work best in such situations, or the organization can provide flexibility in which hours are worked as long as the employee accomplishes agreed-on goals.

Beyond childcare, the flexibility of telework also lends itself to other dependent caregivers — no matter whom the dependent may be (for example, an elderly parent or a disabled spouse).



Chapter 2: Realizing the Benefits of Telework 17

Disabled workersWorkers with disabilities of all sorts may benefit greatly from telework arrangements. Of course, many disabled workers are fully capable of working in an office environment and may wish to do so; however adding in the ability to telework can offer far greater opportunities to those who aren’t able to or don’t wish to deal with long commutes and other hardships that may be imposed by performing their work within the tra-ditional brick and mortar workspace.

Organizations trying to increase the size of their disabled workforce — whether for regulatory or altruistic reasons — may find telework to be an excellent way of recruiting and retaining such employees.

Benefits to employers of teleworkersTeleworkers gain a number of benefits from a flexible work environment, which often results in happier, less stressed employees who turn out to be more productive than those who don’t telework. Teleworking employees report these per-formance benefits:

✓ They have more control of their life/work balance.

✓ They have more time actually available to work (because they have no commute, less prep time required, and so on).

✓ They’re often more satisfied with their jobs because of their ability to telework.

So even though a manager isn’t able to be standing behind them, looking over their shoulders, teleworkers often do more (and better) work than their office-bound colleagues.

I’ve said it before, but teleworkers are happier and less stressed than their in-the-office counterparts. This leads to an obvious (if not easily measured) boost in an organization’s ability to recruit new employees (especially those who would otherwise have to move) and to retain the good employees that they already trained and built a business around.




Teleworking arrangements can open up the geographic range from which they hire, which allows employers to draw exper-tise from around the country or world.

Telework Benefits the Environment

Telework benefits the environment. No qualifications are needed for this statement — it’s simply a fact. Keeping work-ers off the streets and at home can help reduce energy con-sumption significantly, almost no matter how those workers get to work be it in cars, on a bus, or train. There are addi-tional environmental benefits to be gained by having reduced staff within an office or workspace, both short term (fewer lights, computers, HVAC systems, and so on being operated) and particularly in the longer term (where buildings can be designed for fewer peak occupants). These benefits are cov-ered in the following sections.

Making a smaller carbon footprintThe biggest and most obvious environmental benefit from telework is the reduction in commuting, which reduces fuel consumption and the related decrease in carbon and smog emissions.

Just how big is this benefit? Well the telework Research Network (www.teleworkresearchnetwork.com) estimates that if every employee in the U.S. worked from home just one day a week it would account for a savings of about 2.3 million barrels of oil every week and a reduction of greenhouse gases equivalent to taking 77,000 cars off the road! And that’s just in a week! Obviously not every employee can telework even one day a week, but the benefits are diverse and obvious.

Maintaining less office space and equipmentIn the short term — when just beginning a telework program, an organization may find that it can benefit from reduced energy usage by idling office lighting, computers, HVAC, and



Chapter 2: Realizing the Benefits of Telework 19other equipment that would normally be used by employees who are teleworking. Obviously this would be somewhat offset by increased usage within those workers’ homes.

Both employer and employee would still see an overall cost reduction. As employee home (or other teleworking location) energy consumption and possibly cost increased, the costs associated with commuting would decrease.

In the longer term, however, the benefits are even clearer as employers can grow their organizations without increasing the real estate, physical building size, and office equipment requirements that may be otherwise required by a full-time, on-site staff. Smaller offices mean less energy usage within the office as well as reduced environmental impacts for building, manufacturing, and installing office buildings and their associ-ated equipment. Additionally, teleworkers may be well suited for more efficient and economical workplace arrangements, such as office hotel stations. In this arrangement, a smaller number of workstations are shared amongst employees (typi-cally on a reservation basis) based on an average peak occu-pancy rather than total number of employees.

Telework also, of course, provides some slightly less tangible and measurable but still very real environmental benefits, as folks who stay at home to work simply put less stress on the public infrastructure of roads and railways and require fewer police, firefighters, tow trucks, and repair crews to be out driving around during commute times.

The environmental benefits of telework programs can benefit companies directly when they win recognition and publicity from various “green company” awards. Companies may even be eligible for grants and tax reductions when they implement telework.

Telework Saves and Makes Money

It’s all well and good to say that telework is good for employ-ees and good for the environment, or even that the govern-ment may make you implement telework programs (see the sidebar at the end of this chapter). But you shouldn’t feel



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 20like telework is something you have to be strong-armed into or that you must do for altruistic reasons. That’s because telework can have a very real impact on your organizations’ bottom line and can — for those organizations with profit and loss to worry about— cause your organization to become more profitable. And even if your organization is a nonprofit or government agency without “P&L” to worry about, the sav-ings you reap by adopting telework are probably increasingly important in these days of budget shortfalls, looming deficits, and decreased philanthropy.

Telework’s financial benefits are often directly related to the other benefits discussed earlier in this chapter, as each of the benefits to the worker and to the environment tend to have economic benefits that are directly applicable to the employee, the organization, or both.

Rather than rehash all the benefits here, take a look at some real world examples. During the 2011 National Telework Week (held in February of 2011), about 40,000 private sector and government employees (86 percent were federal employees) tried teleworking for an average of 2 days during that week. The savings realized were pretty massive:

✓ Employees saved money by not commuting. The study concluded that the savings, if extended annually would be equivalent to an average of a $3439 raise per employee!

✓ Employees worked more than they would if they com-muted to work. They saved, on average, 2 hours a day of commuting time, some or all of which could be converted to productive work time.

✓ Seventy six percent of respondents (both the employees themselves and their managers) reported that telework made the employees more productive.

Combine the last two bullets (more time available to work and higher productivity) and you can see how telework can help an organization to do more of whatever work it does without increasing staff. And that’s a huge factor for most organizations.

Telework can offer some specific benefits for both operating and capital expenses (Opex and Capex) for most organizations:



Chapter 2: Realizing the Benefits of Telework 21 ✓ On the Opex side, organizations can decrease energy

costs, administrative support costs (fewer people in the office to support), and even things like janitorial services and catering can be decreased.

✓ On the Capex side, organizations can decrease the cost of real estate and buildings, rent, office furnishings, office equipment, and more.

Telework Prepares You for the Unexpected

In the government arena, particularly after 9/11, continuity of operations has become both a key phrase and a very real goal. Continuity of operations means that you’re able to effec-tively perform duties in the event of a natural or man-made disaster that incapacitates physical or electronic infrastruc-tures. Put more frankly, continuity of operations makes sure that someone can still respond when a hurricane blows down the city hall or even something as simple as a backhoe cuts through underground wires outside an office building.

One way that continuity of operations can be ensured is by creating a more distributed workforce. When everyone and everything is in a single building, the chance of everyone being unable to do their jobs because of an event increases exponentially. When workers are physically separate, yet still able to communicate, that risk goes down significantly. And that is exactly what happens when telework is taking place.

It’s not just government agencies who have to worry about continuity of operations — even if they use the specific term, private businesses want and often need to keep the lights on even when some mishap or event affects their physical offices. The more distributed workers are — and the less reli-ant they are upon a single point of failure like an office build-ing that’s burned down — the more likely they are to be able to continue to work when an act of nature or man befalls their business.




Telework is the lawTelework isn’t something that’s just a good idea . . . in many organizations it’s the law. For organizations within the federal government, the telework Enhancement Act of 2010 (search www.loc.gov for “telework enhancement act” if so inclined) was signed into law in December of 2010, and it has made a big differ-ence in how federal agencies must approach telework. In a nutshell, this act requires each federal agency to do the following:

1. Establish a policy under which eligible agency employees may be authorized to telework

2. Determine employee eligibility to participate in telework

3. Notify all employees of their eli-gibility to telework

The act tells all federal agencies to determine a plan of action and poli-cies for telework, to determine which groups of employees are eligible, and inform those employees of their eligibility.

This act has caused a big rush of activity by federal agencies as they assign senior personnel (who must,

by law, have direct access to the agency head as agency telework Managing Officers and begin the process of performing these steps). If you’re in the federal government and you don’t already know, tele-work is coming!

It’s not just federal agencies — not even just governmental agencies — who are being required or at least encouraged and incented to adopt telework. A number of state and local governments have launched telework initiatives for their own agencies, where it makes good pro-ductivity, economic, and environ-mental sense.

Government agencies at the state and federal level have offered pri-vate businesses incentives to pro-vide their own telework programs. For example, the state of Virginia has recently begun offering firms in the state a tax credit of up to $1,200 per employee who becomes a teleworker. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has also piloted telework programs in cities with particularly bad air pollution and traffic.



Chapter 3

Taking Stock of Telework Technology

In This Chapter▶ Understanding the requirements

▶ Comparing VPN and desktop virtualization

▶ Determining how much you should do yourself

Telework, discussed in more detail in Chapter 1, isn’t just a “flip the switch and send the workers home with a

laptop” effort. At least it’s not if you’re doing it right. Instead you have to make a rather concerted effort throughout the organization — particularly but not solely within the IT department — to ensure that your telework effort maintains the communications, productivity, and security that employees enjoy while they’re working within your physical workplace.

Luckily, creating a productive telework environment isn’t nearly as hard as it used to be, because teleworkers can take advantage of the past few decades worth of work in build-ing the Internet, broadband telecommunications networks, portable computing devices, and software. Without too much expense or too much disruption, an organization can easily offer employees all of the applications, data, and communica-tions they get in the office no matter where their desks are.

In this chapter, you take a look at some of the basic require-ments for telework, and then look at the major networking and computing mechanisms used to meet those requirements. You also see how you can “build your own” telework infra-structure or let a specialist firm take care of that for you.




Understanding Your Telework Requirements

In order for you to telework, you must have a few basic requirements. The basic building blocks required for telework include the following:

✓ A computer (or computing device such as a tablet com-puter or smartphone) that the worker can use in her home or remote office location

✓ Appropriate productivity, communications, and/or job-specific software that can be accessed on that computer

You just need access — the software doesn’t have to reside on the remote computer because the software may reside on a remote server

✓ Access to organizational file servers and other databases

✓ Access to organizational e-mail, chat, voice, and other communications systems (including things such as shared workspaces and collaboration applications)

✓ An Internet connection — in the vast majority of cases a broadband Internet connection is required — to access organization assets

✓ An appropriate blend of hardware and software secu-rity to ensure that organizational data remains secure according to policies and requirements

On top of the basic requirements, an organization needs to develop a set of related policy and managerial best practices to ensure that a telework initiative reaps all the benefits that telework has to offer (review Chapter 2 for more on this if you’re not sure) and avoid any pitfalls or liabilities.

These policies and practices can involve all parts of the orga-nization (and its here that groups such as Human Resources and Finance may become heavily involved in the development of a telework plan) and may include planning and thinking through telework elements such as the following:

✓ Analyzing a worker’s roles and job requirements within the organization to identify those jobs that are most and least likely to be amenable to telework



Chapter 3: Taking Stock of Telework Technology 25 ✓ Creating performance guidelines to determine which of

those eligible workers will be offered a telework option

Federal guidelines (under the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010) deny eligibility to workers who have poor atten-dance records, poor job performance, or who’ve been caught using government computers for inappropriate non-work related tasks.

✓ Determining funding available for a telework initiative and perform a cost/benefit analysis of this investment based on expected operational and capital expense savings

✓ Determining what equipment is provided to teleworkers and if or how teleworkers’ own equipment (such as PCs or smartphones) may be used as part of the telework program

✓ Determining minimum network requirements for the teleworkers (for example, broadband type and speed, additional phone lines, mobile voice or broadband ser-vices) and how those are paid (employee-paid versus reimbursement)

✓ Developing of job performance metrics and measurement practices to ensure that the performance of teleworkers is both adequately measured and continues to meet or exceed the job performance of in-office workers

✓ Development of security policies

✓ Development of a telework agreement that lays out the details of what is and isn’t expected of teleworkers

This agreement may contain the following guidelines:

• Agreements about working hours

• Agreements about how many or which days a tele-worker may work remotely (frequency of telework)

• Discussions of job performance metrics required for a worker to remain a teleworker

• Explicit discussions of the administrative elements of telework, such as who pays for office supplies, safety of the home work environment, how legiti-mate expenses are reimbursed, and what kind (if any) of extra liability insurance may be required of the teleworker




Comparing Different Approaches to Telework Security

While it’s possible to implement telework without a strong security system in place (and this is sometimes done by very small organizations), doing so is extremely shortsighted. Even if an organization doesn’t deal with classified materials or customer data that’s protected by law or corporate best practices (such as medical records, account passwords, or credit card information), the inadvertent release or exposure of internal organizational data is always a bad thing.

And, of course, most organizations do have some sort of “pri-vate” data, whether it be officially classified or protected by law. The plans for the latest product, the minutes of a board meeting, or the accounts receivable files of customers are all things that may not be explicitly secret, but which are defi-nitely proprietary and which should stay within the “walls” — be they physical or virtual — of the organization.

When thinking about how to secure the data that your telework-ers work with, no matter what kind of data that is — e-mail, files, database records, and so on — keep in mind three main things:

✓ The security of the static data on teleworkers’ devices (data at rest): In other words, when a file or e-mail has been saved to a teleworker’s computer or other device, is that device safe from intrusion and are those files inac-cessible to unauthorized users? What happens when someone loses a device with data on it?

✓ The security of the communications between remote teleworkers and the organization’s offices and servers (data in transit): Can someone eavesdrop on the files, e-mail, and other communications when a teleworker is actively communicating with the office?

✓ The access into organization networks and servers: This references talking about the “doors” that an organization must open up to the outside world to allow teleworkers to send e-mail, put or access files on the server, and so on.

In order to secure teleworkers’ data and communications in all three domains, you can take one of two approaches (or a mixture of the two, if desired):



Chapter 3: Taking Stock of Telework Technology 27 ✓ Encrypt the “data at rest” on the teleworker’s devices.

Similarly use encryption to scramble the communica-tions between the teleworker and your internal network/file servers by using a Virtual Private Network (or VPN), and use authentication to ensure that only authorized users are allowed “in the door” of your internal network.

• Encryption refers to the cryptographic scrambling of data (whether it is stored on a hard drive or tran-siting across a network) using an algorithm and key. Much like the old days when cable TV systems had those premium channels with fuzzed out pictures unless you had a special cable box, encrypted data is broken apart into unreadable jumbles of data unless you have the key to unlock and reassemble the data. The algorithms behind most encryption systems make it nearly impossible to decrypt (or unscram-ble) the data without the key — even using super-computers most good encryption algorithms would require thousands of years (or longer) to “guess” the right key.

• Authentication refers to the process of confirm-ing the identity of a user — typically using even more encrypted data keys that are known only to authorized users and which can’t be unscrambled in a reasonable amount of time. An authentication system will only provide access to users who have the correct encryption keys.

Authentication can be provided in a number of ways — by a password, a security token, a smart card, or even biometrically via a fingerprint or reti-nal scan. Many organizations require dual-factor authentication, or — more simply — ask employees to use two of these options.

✓ You can keep the data entirely within your network. In fact, the user’s “hard drive,” applications, and even operating system are all stored securely on a file server within your secure network and facilities. Users access their “desktop,” applications, and/or data via an encrypted connection from their remote office, so it appears and “feels like” they’re working on the desk-top of their computer, but in fact they are actually just remotely accessing the server. This process is called desktop virtualization.




Understanding Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)The traditional way of implementing telework — and a still very valid way of doing so — is the implementation of a Virtual Private Network or VPN. VPNs have been around for decades, and have long been used for a situation similar to telework, namely connecting remote branch offices and loca-tions to a headquarter’s network. As VPN technologies have become widely supported on notebook and desktop comput-ers and even on tablet and smartphone devices, it has become increasingly easy to offer VPN access down at the individual user level. In other words, to offer VPN for teleworkers.

To begin understanding VPNs, it helps to first understand the components of the term. A private network is just what the name implies — a network which isn’t accessible to the public (like the Internet is) but rather closed and accessible only to authorized users — most of the times this means to machines which are physically connected to the network within a build-ing or campus environment. Virtual, in the computing sense, refers to the use of software to replicate a hardware device. So a virtual private network creates a closed, private network over public network connections such as the Internet and public telecommunications provider networks.

The technical definition of private specifies that such a net-work uses IP addresses from within the private IP address allocation, if you want to be very specific about it. Quiz on Friday!

Before the advent of VPNs, physically dispersed computers were connected to a private network via the use of (typi-cally very expensive) leased line services from the telephone company, which provided a dedicated point-to-point network connection. This is a proposition that didn’t work very well for telework considering the complexity and gigantic monthly expense of provisioning a point-to-point leased line for each and every telecommuter.

VPN pieces and partsToday, VPNs are much more accessible to the average organi-zation and telework program. The key elements of a VPN are the following:



Chapter 3: Taking Stock of Telework Technology 29 ✓ The VPN Client: This element can be a hardware device

or (more commonly these days) networking software on a device that initiates and controls the VPN connection. The VPN client in telework resides within the telework-er’s premises or on his PC or device.

✓ The VPN Server: This element is a hardware device or software on a server that accepts VPN connections from remote clients.

The client and server work together to encrypt and decrypt (unscramble) data and also to authenticate users.

✓ The tunnel: This piece is the “virtual” private network connection over a public network like the Internet; as the term implies it’s like a tunnel through the Internet from one point to another. The process of transmitting data over the public network in this fashion is called encapsulation.

VPNs use different tunneling or encapsulation protocols, such as Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) or Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP).

✓ The VPN Connection itself is the portion of the network connection between the client and server on which all data is carried across the network.

A VPN connection is designed to provide a secure and reliable connection between a private network within your organiza-tion’s premises and a remote location (like a teleworker’s home). All data that’s sent across this VPN connection — be it files transferred to and from a file server, e-mail, access to shared applications . . . whatever — is secure from eavesdrop-ping by third parties along the way, even though it’s trans-ported across unsecured public networks. To the user, a VPN connection makes his computer appear and “feel” as if it’s in the office connected to the office network; so, depending on how the VPN and the internal network are configured, a remote user can access the same servers and services on your internal network at home that he would while in the office.

Handling the “Data at Rest”A VPN can provide a secure and authenticated network con-nection to your internal network for remote users. That’s a great thing for enabling telework.

But there’s one thing that a VPN doesn’t provide by itself, and that’s security and encryption for the data that’s sitting on the



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 30hard drive of a teleworker’s remote computer. It can be a big problem because of the mobility of the device accessing and storing data:

✓ Most teleworkers use mobile computing devices (such as notebook computers) and these devices are very commonly lost or stolen. Ask any TSA checkpoint in an airport or a taxi driver in a big city or look in the lost in found at hotels, convention centers, and the like and you’ll discover that a left-behind laptop is a many-times-a-day event. And laptop theft is also depressingly common. The VPN secures the connection of that laptop to your network, but it won’t do anything about keep prying eyes out of the data that’s sitting on the hard drive.

✓ Teleworkers’ devices may be used on insecure networks. Even if a VPN protects the teleworker’s connection to your office network, it may not (depending on how you have it set up) protect his web surfing. His home network may be insecure, he may quickly fire up his laptop in a coffee shop, or use an airport Wi-Fi network to check his personal e-mail or to get directions to his destination. In all these cases, the laptop may be exposed to viruses, worms, hackers, and more. At this point the VPN isn’t doing anything to protect the data.

The solution is to incorporate encryption on that static “Data at Rest” on a teleworker’s hard drive. A number of options provide this kind of encryption — the simplest use Operating System (OS) level file encryption behind a user-assigned pass-word, while more sophisticated systems either operate via special hard drives with encryption built in, or use centrally-managed encryption systems that go beyond the hard drive, securing external drives, USB “thumb drives,” and other devices attached to the PC. Such systems may also go beyond the password and utilize more robust authentication systems such as smart cards or even fingerprint readers and may also allow remote wiping (secure deletion) of data on a storage device that’s deemed insecure.

Regardless of how you do it, the data residing on a telework-er’s devices won’t be truly secure until it’s encrypted when it’s just sitting there on the hard drive.

The combination of VPN and encryption technologies can effectively provide a secure environment for telework.

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Chapter 3: Taking Stock of Telework Technology 31

Moving to desktop virtualizationAnother option in addition to the VPN when it comes to securing teleworkers, which has been gaining in popularity recently, is to implement a desktop virtualization system. Desktop virtualization is a concept that you may be familiar with if you’ve ever used (or seen someone use) more than one operating system on a computer at the same time. There are a number of popular virtual machine programs — for example, for Windows 7 OS computers that allow them to run the Windows server operating system within a virtual machine on the computer.

In essence the virtual machine uses software to replicate the Windows OS experience in software. So, for example, you’re using a computer running Windows 7, but the desk-top virtualization software emulates a separate Windows XP environment so that you can run Windows XP applications and essentially create a “virtual bubble” for certain usages and applications that is firewalled off from either personal computing areas or other applications/data. In other words, desktop virtualization lets you run more than one operating system (or, as we’ll soon discuss) more than one instance of an operating system on a single computer.

In a telework environment, desktop virtualization uses a pow-erful server (or cluster of servers) within your organization’s private network to simultaneously serve up a virtual machine to users on remote devices in a way that feels like they’re just turning on and logging into a local (as in, right in front of them) computer.

Another way of thinking of desktop virtualization is that it separates the environment or experience of a computer — the file system, applications, desktop, and menus that a user considers “their computer” — from the actual computer. What appears to the user to be logging on to his computer is, in fact, logging on to a desktop virtualization session on a remote computer.

If you’ve ever heard of the “thin client” computing model — where very inexpensive and only marginally powerful com-puting devices replace worker’s full-power desktop or laptop computers — then you’ve seen an early example of desktop virtualization in action. The difference now is that the client



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 32device doesn’t have to be a “thin client” and that whatever the client device is, it may be at a great distance from the server rather than on a desktop down the hall from the server room.

A host of benefits exist to this desktop virtualization approach when providing computing resources to teleworkers. Among them are the following:

✓ All the data that a teleworker works with resides within an organization’s premises on servers that are within the organization’s firewall and networking security systems and physically controlled and protected by the organiza-tion. Teleworkers can see and work with data from their virtualized desktops, but when they save it, it isn’t saved locally on their hard drives. This fact essentially drives your telework security right through the roof — in a good way!

You don’t have to keep all data on the server if you don’t want to. Many desktop virtualization solutions offer the ability to allow local storage of data and even of virtual-ized applications for use in “offline” environments. How much local storage you allow in your telework environ-ment should be part of your overall telework plan and policy and subject to the sensitivity and legal require-ments of the data your workers access. If you do allow local storage, don’t forget the encryption, as discussed in the section “Understanding Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).”

✓ Desktop virtualization provides more device flexibility for teleworkers. The virtualized desktop is displayed on a teleworker’s existing computer (or a new one) by using client software that runs on most existing computers. Depending on how IT sets up data center capacity and policies, a user never has to worry about running out of hard drive space on her computer or even about the pro-cessors of that computer being “too slow” to run appli-cations; all the client computer does is connect to the network and display the virtualized desktop and apps; it’s the desktop virtualization server that’s doing all the heavy lifting in terms of storing files and crunching num-bers. So even older computers can be clients and newer ones can stay in service longer than they would if used traditionally.



Chapter 3: Taking Stock of Telework Technology 33 ✓ A virtualized environment is centrally maintained and

managed, backed up as part of the overall organizational data backup policy and system and much more robust than a hard drive on a user’s laptop somewhere miles and miles from an IT professional.

This central maintenance is one of the key features of a desktop virtualization solution for telework, because it means that 1) Changes to the image or application upgrades can be done in minutes instead of waiting for systems to come into the office, 2) Because basic mainte-nance tasks are faster and don’t require system hands-on time, IT can spend more time on strategic projects, and 3) When users have a computer hardware issue, there’s no downtime. They can simply log into another system for their work, while their system is being repaired.

✓ Setting up a new user in a virtualized environment is much quicker and easier than setting up the same user with a traditional notebook or other computer.

Some solutions may use a combination of VPN and desktop virtualization. This is a decision made by an organization. A VPN can be an extra layer of security in addition to desktop virtualization. There can be one, the other, or both depending on the client’s security policies.

Determining If You Should Do It Yourself

Beyond making technical decisions regarding VPN and desk-top virtualization, you also need to decide how much of your telework solution you’re going to want to build and support yourself and how much you may want to outsource to an external service provider or consultancy.

Both solutions lend themselves to a build-it-yourself approach or to a completely outsourced approach, depending on your specific requirements and in-house technical expertise.

This decision isn’t, strictly speaking, a binary, either/or one. It’s possible — common, even — to outsource some parts of the process and keep others in-house. For example, you may wish to get help from a trusted vendor to design and do the



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 34initial build-out of your VPN or virtualized network and then maintain and grow it in-house. Or you may contract with one service provider to build and operate your VPN while keeping all of the data management, software, and PC management in-house.

You may even decide — and it can be a great option if net-working and data management isn’t a core competency of your organization — to completely outsource your telework program to “the cloud,” letting a trusted vendor manage your data center, desktop virtualization software, and devices and basically not worrying about the details and heavy lifting.

Many of the technologies discussed can be quite complex to implement, because they often involve interplay between all the pieces of your IT infrastructure. If you don’t have a staff with a high degree of knowledge and experience with enabling telework (either through VPN or desktop virtualization) it probably makes sense to solicit some input from a vendor or service provider with that experience.

You can liken it to beginning the process of building a custom home. You don’t just pull a plan off the shelf and start build-ing. Instead you consult an architect, look at your budget and your needs, and figure out what’s possible. Only then do you start building. It’s likely that your vendor has experience with dozens or even hundreds of similar telework initiatives, so they can help you understand the pros and cons of different approaches, give you a realistic appraisal of what it would cost to meet your needs with various approaches, and even provide you with additional professional services to help you set up policies and manage your finished telework network.

So give ’em a call!



Chapter 4

Making the VPN and Desktop Virtualization

DecisionIn This Chapter▶ Understanding when VPN is the best fit

▶ Making the leap to desktop virtualization

Chapter 3 introduced the two main technologies for support-ing secure teleworkers connectivity. Secure connectivity

is essential for a successful telework initiative, even if your orga-nization isn’t one that deals with classified information, legally protected data (like health records covered under the Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act, HIPPA), or other sensitive information such as customer account or financial data. But if your organization does deal with that kind of data, secure connec-tivity for teleworkers is mandatory and probably required by law!

In this chapter, you discover these two approaches to secure connectivity and read scenarios where each may best fit your telework needs.

Understanding Where VPN Is Required

At this point in time, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are a tried and true technology, long in use for branch and remote office connectivity back to “headquarters.” While VPNs



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 36continue to evolve and proliferate, to some degree they’re an old technology. Not an old technology in the sense that they are (in any way) outdated, but rather VPNs are a mature and well-known technology that many IT professionals are familiar with and that many employees have some familiarity with using on their PCs. Check out Case Study B for more info on VPNs in action.

When would you choose a VPN solution for your telework initiative? To push VPN to the front of your telework shopping list, check out the attributes in this section.

Quickly and easily enables remote connectionIf the biggest and most important part of your telework effort is simply providing secure network connectivity between your internal network servers and services and remotely located workers (for example, your teleworking staff), then VPN is a quick and easy solution for getting there. The tunneling aspect of VPN ensures that workers, no matter where they’re located and no matter what network they’re using to access the Internet (and ultimately your network), are able to “make the connection” without a lot of complexity on their part. VPN client software handles all the networking complexity quite transparently, so the most a user has to do is select the “con-nect to VPN” option in her client. The rest happens without any further user action.

Provides secure communicationVPNs provide security in two ways:

✓ By authenticating users before allowing them to access the VPN

✓ By encrypting the data flowing across public networks so even if it’s intercepted by a third party as it crosses the public network, it won’t be readable or usable by anyone without the proper decryption keys

A VPN doesn’t, by itself, provide security for the data that resides on a user’s hard drive (or other storage media). So for increased data security, you need to implement encryption on



Chapter 4: Making the VPN and Desktop Virtualization Decision 37those storage media (discussed in Chapter 3). In some cases, desktop virtualization solutions can be deployed to ensure data doesn’t remain on the hard drive.

A desktop virtualization solution can also provide secure com-munication, so VPN isn’t in the only option for this attribute.

Is better for VoIPIf part of your telework initiative requires you to provide secured voice communications, a VPN with VoIP VPN capabili-ties (Voice over IP VPN) can make a big difference in meeting your needs. VoIP essentially turns voice conversations into data and transmits them over public and/or private networks. A VoIP VPN then subjects those voice communications to the same data authentication and encryption standards that a plain old VPN does for “regular” (non-voice) data packets.

Has a shorter learning curveVPN isn’t a brand new technology. Most IT professionals have more than a passing knowledge of how VPNs work and how to set them up and (most importantly) how to support users on a VPN. Similarly, many of your potential teleworkers have probably encountered a VPN or two in their working lives and they won’t encounter a steep learning curve when faced with a VPN client log-in on their first day of telework.

Finding a Fit for Desktop Virtualization

Desktop virtualization isn’t exactly a brand new technology either. In some form or another desktop virtualization has probably been around as long as VPN, maybe even longer. But in terms of its usage in the telework arena, desktop virtualiza-tion is definitely the new kid on the block.

But that isn’t to say that it hasn’t been successfully deployed and tested in telework environments, because it has (and it’s passed those tests with flying colors).



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 38So what would make you choose this approach over the tried-and-true VPN or in addition to? This section covers some of the most compelling reasons:

StorageDesktop virtualization can store all your data (and even applica-tions) in a centralized location: It’s simply a lot easier to ensure the security of your data and to enforce policies about its secu-rity (your own policies or those required by law or industry best practices) when it’s within your own four walls and inside your network firewall. Desktop virtualization can enable this kind of control over data by keeping it all stored right in your own data center rather than on dozens or hundreds (or thousands) of laptop storage devices spread throughout the world. In a vir-tualized environment, teleworkers can simply “see” and work with data on their screens without ever storing it locally — even though it feels like they’re working with desktop apps and local storage, they’re not!

Device flexibility Desktop virtualization lets you do more with less, hardware wise. Because all the CPU cycles required to actually run soft-ware (along with all of the memory and storage required) are located in a powerful, centralized server, your teleworking users don’t need to always have the latest and greatest, fastest laptops with the biggest hard drives and the most memory. As long as a device can access the network and run whatever desktop virtualization client your solution requires, a user can work on it as if they were working on a physical desktop computer directly connected to your network. So devices that you provide to your teleworkers can have a longer effective lifespan, even when newer software may require an upgrade to a device running a particular application locally.

Desktop virtualization is also a great way to deal with the con-sumerization that many IT departments struggle with — the situ-ation where employees may have personal computing devices that they prefer to use. If your policy allows and the device is supported by your desktop virtualization system, you can go ahead and let teleworkers use whatever device they want without having to deal with massive support headaches. And as long as you keep your data off that device, you don’t have to worry about security — when the device is lost or stolen or the



Chapter 4: Making the VPN and Desktop Virtualization Decision 39employee moves on. You just disable her account and she’ll not be able to access any organization data and applications from that device any more.

Disaster recovery and data assuranceBecause it’s centrally managed and data’s stored within your own datacenter, it’s a lot easier to deal with data management and recovery in a virtualized environment. When disaster strikes and something corrupts your data or causes a data loss, you have a single place to focus on in your recovery effort, instead of trying to remotely support users with dead hard drives or viruses infecting thousands of computers at once. And it’s a lot easier to backup and maintain a redundant network server within your own datacenter than it is to do so across a multitude of remotely-located hard drives.

Systems managementWith a virtualized telework solution there’s a lot less software to manage on remote systems (that are usually physically out of reach to your IT staff, at least without prior planning) and a lot more to manage within your own datacenter. Which is, of course, exactly where your IT staff prefers to manage things (it’s always easier to manage something you can put your hands on rather than something that’s sitting on someone else’s desk miles away). And desktop virtualization means that there are simply fewer things to manage, because policies and easy-to-use consoles facilitate the creation and management of virtual desktops for your users.

Simpler in the long runChoosing desktop virtualization may take a bit more effort on the front end, as you set up and deploy the solution. But over time desktop virtualization is simple to manage. Take a simple pro-ductivity or business software upgrade: Do you want to test and then upgrade it once on the desktop virtualization server (from which it will be immediately available to all users as soon as they next log in), or do you want to individually roll out that upgrade to all of your teleworker’s notebook computers, one at a time?

Lower support help desk costsBecause it’s simpler and centrally managed, and because it requires less software on the teleworker’s remote client,



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 40desktop virtualization can reduce your support help desk costs considerably. Beyond dealing with the inevitable (and unre-lated) hardware, networking, and system software snafus on teleworkers’ computers, all you really need to deal with remotely is making sure that the desktop virtualization client software is installed, up-to-date, and running. Everything else is managed on the desktop virtualization server by your staff or by a vendor if you choose to outsource that. This process takes less time, and when it comes to help desk, less time equals less money.

Give users only what they need, when they need itThere’s a tendency in telework environments — particularly in remote telework environments when the workers are only rarely physically present in an office — to “load up” an employee’s computer with all the software that they not only need now but also may need in the future. All this soft-ware, of course, then needs to be supported and upgraded. In a desktop virtualization environment, teleworkers simply access whatever applications they need at any particular time and for any particular task — remotely and without, in most cases, any need for IT intervention. You can set up policies that keep teleworkers from accessing apps and data that they don’t need or shouldn’t see, and easily apply changes to those policies without needing to directly or indirectly access their computers.

Lower software costsBusiness software often is quite unlike the “apps” that domi-nate tech news today. Per-seat licenses for many applications can run into the hundreds of dollars, multiplied by each tele-worker’s computer with that software installed. It is not cheap! Desktop virtualization lets you explore a concurrent licensing model for software (at least where vendors allow this), so you buy software licenses based on maximum concurrent users rather than the number of individual computers on which it may be installed. So instead of paying for licenses for applica-tions that just sit there unused most of the time, you can pay for a smaller number of licenses and still let occasional users access applications when needed.



Chapter 5

Why Dell for Your Telework Solutions?

In This Chapter▶ Learning where Dell fits into the telework continuum

▶ Discovering Dell hardware for telework

▶ Digging into Dell’s vision for virtualization

▶ Letting Dell do the work for you

You may already rely on Dell for personal computers and servers, mobile devices, networking equipment, and pro-

fessional services. But that’s not all that Dell can bring to the table — they have a full line of solutions for telework that can provide everything from notebook computers and security soft-ware to run on them to a fully outsourced and managed hosted virtualization service. Dell offers an expert assessment service that looks into your specific telework needs and provides you with recommendations and expertise needed to begin imple-menting a robust and successful telework solution.

Dell and Telework: A Great MatchDell has both a full range of solutions to match your telework needs and extensive experience deploying real-world telework implementations for customers of all sizes.

What’s different about Dell when it comes to telework? Here are some key differentiators:



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 42 ✓ Dell is more open: Dell’s telework solutions are open —

meaning that Dell offers multiple software and infrastruc-ture options designed to suit and integrate with your existing technological environment, no matter what it is today. And this open architecture allows you to grow and change your telework infrastructure as your needs and technologies change.

✓ Capable: Built on proven Dell hardware and with over tens of thousands of man-hours of effort put into integra-tion, testing, and optimization, Dell’s telework solutions are ready to go right out of the box, so you don’t have to spend any more time than necessary.

✓ Affordable: Dell’s solutions are designed to scale to the telework needs of any size organization, with a variety of hardware options that keep you from over- or under-buying for your needs, and hosted solutions that let you buy exactly what you need, when you need it.

Dell’s telework solutions make it easier for you to integrate your telework efforts with your current IT infrastructure, let you implement those efforts faster, and reduce the effort required to maintain your telework infrastructure on an ongoing basis.

Dell Computing Solutions for Your Teleworkers

Regardless of where you end up with your telework efforts, you’re going to need a good underlying base for those efforts. That base begins with the computing devices in the hands of your teleworkers. Dell can certainly provide that base.

LaptopsThe centerpiece of the teleworker device lineup offered by Dell (and it’s a wide line-up!) is the Latitude “6x20 series” (spe-cifically the E6520, E6420, E6320, and E6220).

The E6420 base is twice as strong as the E6410, which pro-vides more durability and rigidity to protect your data and work from everyday, on-the-go abuse.



Chapter 5: Why Dell for Your Telework Solutions? 43This family of notebook computers — Dell’s premier offering in the Latitude series — has been completely redesigned for a more appealing look and feel while also sporting greatly improved durability for on-the-go reliability. If you’ve ever had to throw your laptop in that tray at the TSA line, you’ll appreciate this.

The most highly recommended 6x20 series laptop for telework-ers is the Latitude E6320, a 13.3" notebook. This computer offers an optional mobile broadband network card that allows it to con-nect to most cellular networks in the U.S. and worldwide. Your teleworkers can be productive no matter where they are.

SoftwareEven the best telework infrastructure can’t keep your data secure if it isn’t being secured on the devices that hold it — it would be a shame to develop a highly-secure telework con-nectivity network only to have the data breached or compro-mised on the hard drive of a lost or stolen laptop.

Data breaches from stolen laptops happen all the time. If you have a moment, do a Google search on “data breach stolen laptop” and you’ll see just how frequently this occurs. Organizations as different as the U.S. Army, a major hospital, research universities, and even (ironically) the network secu-rity firm VeriSign have suffered costly and embarrassing data losses this way.

Luckily, Dell has you covered on this front, with their Data Protection services, Data Protection|Encryption, and Data Protection|Access.

✓ Data Protection|Encryption provides protection and security for data at rest. This solution offers central man-agement of data encryption organization-wide, allowing your IT staff to set and enforce policies, automatically detect new hardware that needs to be protected (like a new external drive connected to a protected computer) and to easily roll out encryption to new computers as they come online. It helps keep your data safe, period.

In case your chief security honcho (CSH to coin a new ‘C-level’ acronym) asks, Dell Data Protection | Encryption



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 44is a FIPS 140.2 level 2 solution! If you don’t need to know what this is, don’t ask.

✓ Data Protection|Access comes standard on all current Latitude E6x20 notebooks. This solution, which includes a special cryptographic chip (a cryptoprocessor) installed in the computer, can encrypt and store passwords and other credentials outside of the Windows operating system. Doing so improves security because these passwords aren’t stored in the vulnerable OS file system and are there-fore much less susceptible to being breached by hackers or malicious software. The Data Protection | Access solu-tion therefore provides much greater identity assurance when a user/notebook connects to a telework VPN.

How Dell Handles VirtualizationBeyond the hardware and software described in the previ-ous section, Dell also offers a very robust set of telework virtualization offerings for enterprises. These range from the hardware, software and know-how to build your own custom virtualization platform to a fully managed and hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) virtual desktop service.

Dell builds this set of offerings called Dell Desktop Virtualization Solutions (DDVS) on top of its own powerhouse enterprise-class server and hardware offerings including

✓ Dell PowerEdge servers

✓ Dell EqualLogic storage solutions

✓ Dell PowerConnect networking equipment

This equipment is the same that many organizations are already using for their existing server, storage, and network-ing needs, and Dell has designed DDVS to “play nice” with other, non-Dell systems already in use within an organiza-tion’s IT infrastructure.

On top of this Dell-provided hardware infrastructure, Dell’s DDVS portfolio sticks with its openness pledge by allowing cus-tomers to choose from a variety of different virtualization envi-ronments, including solutions from Citrix (www.citrix.com) and VMware (www.vmware.com). This means there’s no rigid lock-in with one provider and one technology choice with DDVS.



Chapter 5: Why Dell for Your Telework Solutions? 45This hardware and software is packaged together into the Dell Integrated Solution Stack (ISS), which offers you a soup-to-nuts virtualized telework solution that you can deploy in a fraction of the time it would take to create your own from scratch. The stack is shown in Figure 5-1.You can choose from

✓ Customer Managed Solution: In this scenario, you own the hardware and software and Dell handles the installation and implementation. The difference comes in when Dell finishes the implementation: The “keys” are handed over to you; your own IT staff manages the solution and handles customer (teleworker) support internally. If you have a robust and capable IT staff or if you have data that you need to keep in-house, this may be the solution for you.

✓ Managed Service Solution: In this case, you purchase the hardware and software licenses required to create your telework infrastructure. Dell installs and technically implements your telework selection and then provides continuous and ongoing support for it. In this case, the data stays inside your network, in your own data center, but Dell personnel keeps it up and running for you and supports your users.

Dell also offers a variant of this solution where you still own the servers and hardware, but Dell hosts them for you in its own data center and manages them for you. This solution lets you own the hardware that stores your data and applications so there’s no server or stor-age infrastructure shared with other customers without having to build out your own data center if you don’t want to or can’t.

✓ Virtual Desktop as a Service (VDaaS): This is the option where you go on “full auto” and let Dell do all the work. Dell hosts and manages your virtual desktops within their cloud and takes care of managing and protecting your data. You receive service level agreement (SLA) assurances about things such as uptime, performance, and data availability, so Dell puts its money where its mouth is on this one.

✓ Custom Solutions: If you need to integrate your telework solution with specific legacy systems that may not work with one of Dell’s recommended system architectures, no problem! Dell’s Custom Solution option allows Dell’s con-sultants to build you a (you guessed it!) custom solution



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 46that best fits your needs. Dell can design the solution, pro-vide the equipment and carry out the implementation — or you can just pick the parts you need and do the rest yourself.

Flexible Delivery Models that Suit Your Unique Needs and Goals

Custom

Purchase Dellhardwarecomponents that fityour architecture,such as servers,storage, networking

Utilize Dell referencearchitectures

Integrated SolutionStack Managed By

You

Integrated SolutionStack Managed By

Dell

Virtual Desktopas-a-Service

You Manage Dell Manages

Leverage Dell servicesexpertise for designand implementation

Leverage Dell servicesexpertise for design,implementation, andon-going management

Dell provides fully-managed virtualdesktops hosted fromthe Dell CloudDell Virtual Desktop asa Service (vDaaS)

You own the ISS andDell operates andsupports via ManagedServices at your site or the Dell data center

You own and managethe ISS

DDVSDiscoveryWorkshop

DDVSServicesDellManagedServices

DDVSBlueprintAssessmentDDVS Design &ProposeDDVS

Figure 5-1: The Dell Integrated Solution Stack.

Partnering with Dell on Telework Initiatives

Dell offers a wide range of hardware, software, and service solutions designed to meet the telework needs of organiza-tions of all types and sizes, ranging from private sector start-ups with a handful of geographically-dispersed employees to large federal government agencies with worldwide footprints.

While this range of services is pretty unique in and of itself, the real difference maker for Dell is the depth of experience that its solutions team can offer. Dell lets you pick how you want to deploy DDVS — you can do it yourself (with Dell’s help) or you can let Dell handle everything with VDaaS. It’s up to you, and Dell’s Assessment Team will look closely at your needs, budget, and capabilities to recommend which approach will work best for you.



Case Study A

Adobe’s Approach: Telework and Continuity

of OperationsIn This Chapter▶ Watching the government get into telework

▶ Understanding telework issues

▶ Letting Adobe solutions enable your telework

When the commander of a Navy recruiting district in Pennsylvania got a promotion that involved relocat-

ing to Washington, D.C., he decided his family had moved enough — roughly every two years. So he went to D.C. alone. But in 2008 when an opportunity arose to join a telework pilot project called Virtual Command, the 36-year Navy vet-eran quickly jumped on it. With a virtual private network (VPN) connection to the Navy’s secure network, a Navy-issued laptop, and a cell phone, he now works from his home office in Pittsburgh and continues to oversee 15 people.

This example, in which (among other things) the Navy saves relocation costs, illustrates why telework in federal, state, and local government agencies is growing steadily. Driven by fiscal, environmental, lifestyle, and Continuity of Operations (COOP) considerations, telework may also help revitalize gov-ernment workforces by attracting and retaining a new genera-tion of workers lured by a flexible work arrangement.

10_9781118139172-bapp01.indd 4710_9781118139172-bapp01.indd 47 6/28/11 2:46 PM6/28/11 2:46 PM


Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 48In this chapter, you discover the factors spurring telework in government agencies, you identify some challenges in tele-work, and you find out how Adobe addresses telework’s tech-nology requirements.

Why Telework Is Catching On in Government

From the aggressive telework program of the U.S. General Services Administration to Georgia’s tax credits for private sector telecommuting programs, agencies at all levels of government are embracing telework for a variety of reasons. They include

✓ Continuity of Operations: Keeping critical government services up and running in a disaster or other emergency remains a key objective at every level of government. Telework, by its nature, provides COOP efforts what they need: workers who are geographically distributed and equipped to carry out government business. Because of this overlap, COOP funds can help finance telework efforts. In fact, telework represents the “everyday use” capability of a COOP plan, testing its robustness.

Naturally, one of the government’s largest COOP/telework initiatives is at the U.S. Department of Defense, where always-on operations, security of information, and the ability to audit for compliance are paramount. But not all COOP instances involve disasters. In Minneapolis, for example, Hennepin County Government relied on its tele-work program to remain “business as usual” during the Republican National Convention in 2008.

✓ Going green: Government agencies have been directed to be more environmentally sensitive. Telework reduces the carbon and fuel use footprints of agencies (particu-larly of their commuting employees) and reduces their impact on public infrastructures by reducing traffic. Telework makes fiscal sense, too, with its relatively short payback period on investments.

✓ Skipping the commute: Telework takes cars off the road during rush hour — benefitting both teleworkers and those left commuting. It also reduces the cost, time, and



Case Study A: Adobe’s Approach 49stress of commuting. Sun Microsystems, which has had a telework program for 14 years, has found that telework-ers work for about 60 percent of the time they save by not commuting — so the company actually gets more work from teleworkers. In Arizona, state teleworkers drive 5.25 million fewer miles and endure 181,000 fewer hours of stressful driving every year.

✓ Reducing the need for office space: When employees work from home, agencies need less office space for them, saving public money. In 2006–2007, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) hired 1,200 examiners, enough to fill a ten-story office building. Luckily, USPTO estab-lished a telework program — of the 54 percent of USPTO’s employees eligible for telework nearly 83 percent chose to do so, many full-time. This telework program, combined with hot desking (the practice of sharing work stations on an as-available or reservation basis — like submarine crews used to share berths when they were on different watch schedules) for the times that examiners must come into the office, enabled USPTO to add all of these employ-ees without signing a single new lease.

✓ Improving the workforce: Telework addresses several critical workforce needs for government. The flexibil-ity of telework may help recruit the best and brightest young workers, who may otherwise turn to the private sector. Studies have found that telework is increasingly important to Gen Y workers, while at the other end of the age spectrum, telework can be used to entice retirement-age workers to stay on, at least part-time, so an agency can tap their experience.

The workers attracted by telework may be more produc-tive. A 2008 study at the National Science Foundation found that 87 percent of managers reported that tele-workers’ productivity increased or remained the same as those who stayed in their offices. Similarly, analysis of more than 100 Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) teleworkers found a 27 percent increase in pro-ductivity over their time in the office.

✓ Work-life balance: A soft but very real benefit of telework is how it affects government employees’ lives. Skipping a stressful commute clearly helps workers and their fami-lies balance work with the rest of their lives. On the job, this reduced stress may lead to greater creativity. And



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 50telework gives agencies a tool to retain valued employees who must relocate because of a spouse’s new job or for other family reasons.

✓ Obeying the law: Building on previous laws, the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 requires federal agen-cies to provide all eligible federal employees with the option to telework. Simple as can be: it’s the law!

Issues in Telework The security of government data is the most serious telework issue agencies must address. Sensitive information can be inadvertently sent to an unauthorized person, stolen (when a laptop is lost or stolen), or maliciously released. At remote sites, teleworkers create, edit, and manage electronic docu-ments that must be handled and transported securely. A robust security infrastructure that addresses security at the document level is critical, and it must be persistent, dynamic, and transparent.

Telework also requires changes to an agency’s work culture. The top concern for agencies is how supervisors manage tele-workers. Training managers and teleworkers in goal-oriented (rather than presence-oriented) approaches so they can prop-erly cultivate and “measure” independent work is a key step. Agencies also must decide which jobs and which employees are best suited for telework.

Especially in the early stages of a telework program, careful selection can enhance success. Teleworkers must also learn to collaborate remotely with coworkers and deal with the potential isolation of telework.

How Adobe Solutions Enable Telework

Beyond those base requirements discussed throughout this book, Adobe solutions provide tools for telework to succeed. Free Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash Player software give



Case Study A: Adobe’s Approach 51users the foundation to protect documents, create captivat-ing presentations, and hold web meetings. Because Reader is installed on 94 percent of PCs shipped worldwide and Flash Player on 99 percent, teleworkers can reach across boundar-ies to work more securely using software already installed on their PCs, a huge advantage over IT competitors. Home office to data center, mobile worker to government customer, online to offline — these lines disappear with Adobe technologies.

Adobe web conferencing technology, Adobe Connect, keeps teleworkers in touch with coworkers and constituents. Unlike other web conferencing tools, it doesn’t require any addi-tional downloads or plug-ins because it’s built on the Flash technology already on over 98 percent of PCs worldwide.

Adobe Connect software can be used for remote collabora-tion, which is critical for daily office operations, as well as for eLearning or remote training. Compliance and control are key differentiators. Administrators can turn specific features on or off across an entire corporate account, such as the ability to share screens or applications. Settings also allow adminis-trators to save or delete all chat transcripts, record all meet-ings or block recordings, and create notices and disclaimers on the login page that users must accept before meetings. In addition, bandwidth-friendly Adobe Connect offers persistent spaces that remain unchanged between meetings, video, VoIP, whiteboarding, and breakout rooms.

Adobe Acrobat Pro software allows workers to compose documents with multiple content types — text, spreadsheets, photos, 3D drawings, and more — and circulate them for shared reviews. Commenting tools support this asynchronous collaboration, and Acrobat Pro also supports redaction, an important feature in government. Access rights to control who sees the document are easily assigned and managed.

Thanks to the Adobe family of LiveCycle Enterprise Suite soft-ware, teleworkers can participate in paperless work processes on an anytime, anywhere basis. Teleworkers, like their in-office colleagues, get the benefits of data capture and dynamic forms while online or offline from Adobe LiveCycle Forms ES software. Unlike paper-based processes, automated processes don’t break when a workforce disperses.



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 52Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management ES software enables agencies to apply security policies that specify who can see specific documents, what they can do, when, and for how long. LiveCycle Rights Management ES even audits usage and allows authors to update security policies anytime, even after a document is distributed.

Adobe LiveCycle Process Management ES software lets man-agers orchestrate human-centric processes for both tele-workers and colleagues inside the agency firewall. Through the software’s component-based architecture, users can streamline, integrate, and protect end-to-end processes that unify people, systems, documents, business rules, and web services — quickly and flexibly.

Government agencies need a usable solution for telework. Leveraging Adobe technologies enables government employ-ees to work anywhere, anytime — plus it makes them more productive and efficient working in the agency’s office.



Case Study B

F5’s Approach: Secure, Accelerated Application Access for Remote Users

In This Chapter▶ Securely getting the data to your remote users

▶ Improving user experience and enhanced productivity for teleworkers

▶ Using scalability to meet future IT demands

▶ Making it happen with BIG-IP

In an environment where teleworkers — as well as a mobile workforce, partners, and contractors — require access to

an organization’s IT infrastructure, old IT models no longer work. This is especially true as more and more application traffic moves across the web. IT managers need to find ways of controlling and securing access to their data and applica-tions while simultaneously providing remote users with the performance and “on the network” feel that they’d expect if they were in a physical office on the LAN.

It’s a challenge, to be sure. In this Chapter, you find out how F5 Network’s BIG-IP product line can help meet these goals.




Delivering the Data SecurelyYou’re probably all too familiar with long waiting times while a web page loads or a large file downloads. And you surely understand the importance of controlling and securing access to your organizational IT assets when they’re accessed remotely over public networks.

Delivering IT applications isn’t a simple exercise. There are many issues to address: How do I make sure applications are always available? How do I secure applications? How can I make sure I’m using my resources (for example, servers, bandwidth) efficiently? How do I make sure delivery is opti-mized for the best user experience?

You can solve these problems one at a time by buying simple load balancers and other single-purpose devices, by modi-fying the applications, and by paying for more resources. However, this strategy is costly to build and manage. Security is another concern when delivering applications. Here too, you may have some options such as modifying the application or installing point solutions. However, this too is costly and could still leave you vulnerable.

A typical network may only have visibility into user’s identi-ties at a very high level (like IP address) and not be able to determine whether a user is a contractor, guest, or employee. This level of security has been acceptable to many organiza-tions because applications and other critical resources are protected via authorization and authentication processes (usually user ID and password) and identity access manage-ment (IAM) solutions. However, because networks are blind to a user’s identity, the risk is that users “see” applications that they aren’t authorized to access. For example, a contractor who has been granted network access could “go exploring” (undetected) and attempt to access sensitive information.

Security and identity are integral parts of any application infrastructure that delivers authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) services. Integrated application access con-trol with scalable web security can drive user and group iden-tity into the network for policy-based control to applications.



Case Study B: F5’s Approach 55

Application Delivery Made EasyThe Application Delivery Controller (ADCs) platform is specifically designed to address these issues by serving as a strategic point of control in your network, ensuring that applications are fast and available, and that applications and data are secure. The F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is the market-leading ADC. It load balances, secures, and optimizes application traffic, giving you the ability to add servers easily, eliminate downtime, improve application per-formance, and meet your security requirements. BIG-IP LTM provides the advanced features you need to direct users to the best possible resources at the application level.

AvailabilityHow can you make sure applications are always available? In the past, you could address this challenge with a simple load balancer. Spread the traffic among several servers and you’re done. But as applications get more complex, your method for load balancing has to keep up. You can’t just spread traffic around; the load balancer needs to understand the application to distribute the traffic appropriately. BIG-IP LTM ensures the best resources are always selected, has deep visibility into application health, and proactively inspects and responds to errors. While BIG-IP LTM manages the local resources in each data center, F5 BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager (GTM) can auto-matically direct users to the closest or best-performing data center. When you couple the features of BIG-IP LTM with those of BIG-IP GTM, you can realize the full potential of multiple data centers and provide seamless disaster recovery and routing based on quality of service or business criteria.

SecuritySo, how do you secure applications? After your applica-tions are available to users, you still need to make sure only authenticated users gain access and that they only access the resources they are authorized to see. Management of AAA in a web application deployment can be costly in an enterprise infrastructure.



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 56You can authenticate web users in a number of ways:

✓ Code authentication into the application during develop-ment, but that can be costly, difficult to change, and may not be as secure as you need.

✓ Install agents on the servers, but that’s difficult to manage and not particularly interoperable. Additionally, this design can become costly in regard to both deploy-ment and management because it’s decentralized and every single server needs attention.

Authorization and accounting, which may be required for regulatory compliance, can be overlooked or completely missing with these strategies.

✓ Install additional specialized access proxies; however, they’re unreliable, costly, and aren’t scalable. Plus, you’ll add units to your infrastructure, defeating any consolida-tion efforts.

Adding F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) to BIG-IP LTM brings identity, authentication, and access control to any BIG-IP environment, giving IT the ability to consolidate infrastructure, reduce AAA management costs, and drive user identity into the network.

In the case of web application authentication, you can use BIG-IP APM to replace specialized access proxies or agents and gain superior scalability and high availability.

Imagine, for example, going to a banking web site or an internal corporate customer relationship management (CRM)/enter-prise resource planning (ERP) system; and before you even get a chance to log on, there’s a check to ensure you have antivirus protection and/or a local firewall enabled, or that you possess a certain certificate that verifies your identity. You may feel a greater sense of security and look to only do business with websites that offer that level of protection. From an administra-tor point of view, this can have a two-fold effect:

✓ First, you’ll be educating the user on the importance of security.

✓ Second, you can ensure that the user only has access to his information with advanced authentication and access control along with detailed reports on every user session activity helping you maintain regulatory compliance.



Case Study B: F5’s Approach 57BIG-IP APM for web access management offers enterprises cost-effective, policy- based user access control, unified appli-cation access control, application security for complying with regulations (for example, PCI, HIPAA), secure connections with SSL, and integration with existing enterprise infrastruc-ture and applications.

Value of AccessThe mobile workforce is continuing to grow at a rapid pace. The IDC predicts that the mobile worker population will increase to 1.2 billion in 2013, accounting for 33 percent of the worldwide workforce. Paramount to business operations is the ability for mobile workers to access corporate resources in a secure manner. However, abundant challenges exist. You can incur a significant cost in scaling out a secure remote access solution because the performance of current SSL VPN solutions can suffer when the load gets too heavy. AAA man-agement becomes even more critical — not only to ensure that valid users are requesting access but also to make sure they’re only gaining access to the resources they are autho-rized to view. Additionally, global teleworkers will be using a wide range of clients connected to various types of networks. The new model for remote access requires access security, acceleration services, and application availability.

Using resources efficientlyHow can you ensure that you’re using IT resources as effi-ciently as possible? With support for up to 40,000 concurrent users on one device, enterprise-level scalability, application delivery that’s twice as fast as traditional SSL VPN, the F5 BIG-IP Edge Gateway advanced remote access solution pro-vides a unique set of features to consolidate and unify all your access needs for half the price of competitive solutions. BIG-IP Edge Gateway integrates with the existing enterprise infrastructure, providing AAA access services to networks, applications, and portals.

Comprehensive endpoint security ensures that all devices that request access follow your organizational policy. As more per-sonal computing devices are being used within the workplace, the concept of trusted versus untrusted is becoming hidden.



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 58IT should treat every device, including IT-issued equipment, as untrustworthy until proven otherwise. Deep inspections can determine antivirus and local firewall status, whether there’s a client certificate, if the system contains a particular identifier and the host’s overall security posture. Administrators can also downgrade access if a certain device fails to meet one or more requirements.

For those employees with company equipment, the F5 BIG-IP Edge Client can be installed as part of the overall corpo-rate image package to enable always-connected application access. The BIG-IP Edge Client smart connection feature offers location awareness and zone determination for VPN sup-port. It knows when a device is no longer connected to the corporate domain, and it can automatically initiate a secure SSL tunnel to allow the user to seamlessly and securely move from one network to another, improving client productivity and mobility. If a user loses their VPN connection due to net-work conditions, BIG-IP Edge Client automatically reconnects the device after connectivity is re-established.

OptimizationOptimized delivery is one of the biggest challenges in pro-viding an optimal user experience. Remote workers want an experience that “feels like” being on the corporate LAN even if they’re connected to a high-latency network. If an IT depart-ment wanted to deploy some sort of application acceleration, they need to procure new specialized controllers and add them to the mix of equipment already being maintained by IT. This additional equipment adds both CapEx and OpEx to already tight IT budgets.

How can you ensure delivery is optimized for the best user experience? BIG-IP Edge Gateway comes equipped with appli-cation acceleration services to deliver LAN-like performance to any user around the globe.

With these F5 solutions, web application deployment becomes a whole lot easier, safer, and more resilient — whether from a traditional data center or cloud environment.



Case Study B: F5’s Approach 59

How BIG-IP Makes It HappenThrough a range of products, F5 has solved the security plus acceleration challenge for remote users starting with BIG-IP Edge Gateway and BIG-IP APM. With the powerful, easy-to-use management interfaces, IT administrators can create detailed access policies that are easy to understand and deploy.

Scalability, performance, and reliability have been hampered by traditional SSL VPN solutions. However, F5 products directly address these key challenges. BIG-IP Edge Gateway (with WAN optimization included) touts 40,000 concurrent users, 8-gigabit throughput, and the F5 TMOS architecture, giving users BIG-IP LTM performance with added security and optimization to provide a superior user experience. Supporting a breadth of clients, applications, and infrastruc-ture, IT can consolidate its infrastructure, support global users, and offer security plus acceleration all on one BIG-IP Edge Gateway. BIG-IP APM on BIG-IP LTM brings identity, authentication, and access control with an easier, more pow-erful, and cost-effective way to manage your network identity and web application infrastructure.

When you combine the solution with BIG-IP GTM, you add global intelligence to your data center infrastructure, pro-viding seamless disaster recovery, IP geolocation, DNSSEC, and intelligent routing for the worldwide user base. All these BIG-IP solutions run on TMOS, which allows additional fea-tures and functionality to be deployed in a non-disruptive manner, enabling each to share context and real-time condi-tions on the network making application delivery fast, avail-able, and secure.



Case Study C

LifeSize’s Approach: Bringing High-Def Video

to TeleworkIn This Chapter▶ Understanding the need for high definition

▶ Choosing LifeSize — seeing is believing

▶ Understanding how to succeed at high definition

▶ Measuring the video ROI

Organizations of all sorts find that to operate with maxi-mum efficiency in a distributed economy, they must be

able to seamlessly connect their geographically dispersed workforce (teleworkers), customers, and partners. An impor-tant way to ensure the success of a telework initiative is to enable true human interaction and collaboration. However, that collaboration shouldn’t cost the company millions in travel costs or the environment in long-term damage from carbon emissions.

Most organizations know that video conferencing solutions are available to help address their need for face-to-face col-laboration. What these organizations don’t know, however, is the viability of video collaboration solutions, if their return on investment makes sense or if, in fact, teleworkers can get by with the standard business communications tools of e-mail, IM, and audio calls.

This chapter discusses a few key drivers and highlights how various industries and people around the globe are gaining



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 62significant business and personal value from video communi-cations in their telework solutions.

Why High-Definition Video?The most compelling reason to adopt high-definition (HD) video communications is the fundamental human need for people to communicate face-to-face. Other types of collaboration — over the phone, on e-mail, or IM — can’t replicate what happens in a true face-to-face interaction because over 60 percent of communication is proven to be nonverbal. People must combine face-to-face meetings with other communication tools to fully understand each other and keep projects and decisions moving forward.

The next time you meet on an audio conference call, think about what you may be missing. If you present an idea to a team or a manager, are you sure that they agreed with your concept at the other end of the line? Do you know if they’re truly listening? Is it even possible that someone else is there but you don’t know it?

Recently a marketing team presented a new set of programs to a sales team. Some of the people were on audio and some on video. Without one word being spoken, it was clear from the participants on the videoconference which ideas weren’t palatable to the sales team. A shrug or look in the other direc-tion can speak volumes about the responses of people in a meeting. A picture is truly worth a thousand words.

In today’s fast-paced, just-in-time decision-making environ-ment, sometimes meeting in person isn’t efficient or even pos-sible, particularly for a remote teleworker, and yet the risk of not doing so can be substantial.

A number of high-level macroeconomic trends exist that are driving organizations to telework and that help make the case for high-def video collaboration, including the following:

✓ Globally, regionally, and locally distributed organiza-tions: Over 91 percent of people no longer work at head-quarters offices. Employees are working in home offices, in remote locations, or are simply across a large campus or city. It’s not as easy as it once was to walk down the



Case Study C: LifeSize’s Approach 63hall for an impromptu meeting. Additionally, organiza-tions are adding workers globally through outsourcing or global expansion. The result is a workforce that’s widely dispersed and hardly ever in the same place together.

✓ Expensive, inconvenient travel: Anyone who travels knows that flight delays, tight seating, and increased security requirements have made the experience difficult and taxing, and there’s no relief in sight. While travel is sometimes a required means of human interaction, people are considering alternatives whenever possible. Video communications is an ideal alternative, and travel savings alone can easily translate into a solid return on investment for any organization considering it.

✓ Competition: Competition is fundamental across every business sector, whether you’re an enterprise organiza-tion or a full-scale federal organization. The ability to reduce risk from a poor decision or lack of communica-tion is improved with regular face-to-face interactions, which can effectively be achieved through video commu-nications. Agile, innovative organizations are using video to connect subject matter experts from anywhere in the world to meet on a moment’s notice.

✓ Environmental: The way we live today and travel to meet face-to-face isn’t sustainable, so many organizations are considering the impact of their carbon emissions on the environment. Video communications provides an alterna-tive to airline and automobile travel and can be part of an environmental carbon offset or reduction initiative.

✓ Work-life balance: Travel, jet lag, missing a child’s recital or sporting event, continual catch-up from week to week travel — these are often issues facing frequent travelers and commuters. Without compromising on productivity and communication, there’s a benefit to increasing time at home and improving worker morale.

✓ Innovation and connections: Education and healthcare organizations have long been creative users of video communications to extend access to subject matter experts. The ability to connect educators, students, researchers, and the private sector in an interactive face-to-face encounter opens a wide range of possibili-ties. These applications demand the utmost quality and technology transparency to get the most out of the experience, for example: telemedicine consultations,



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 64continuing health education, real-time classes, music and dance performances, and meetings.

Who Is LifeSize?Since its inception, LifeSize has simplified, streamlined, and improved the face of video conferencing, building a better, clearer solution for organizations across the globe. As a pio-neer and leader in HD video communications, LifeSize enables businesses to bring products to market faster, allows teams to collaborate without boundaries, and breaks down competitive barriers in the global marketplace.

Since delivering the world’s first HD video conferencing product in 2005, LifeSize has continued to drive universal video collaboration with groundbreaking products that have changed the way people and organizations work together. LifeSize delivers a full solution set of HD video conferencing endpoints as well as its own suite of network infrastructure and management solutions.

Video conferencing is a culture-changing capability. To be truly universal in scope, video collaboration must be as seam-less and effective as communicating in person. That’s why LifeSize solutions are designed to be reliable and simple to use, as well as innovative and technically superior.

Year after year, LifeSize delivers best-in-class HD video and audio that is not only immersive but also incredibly intuitive, enabling the rapid adoption that is necessary for building collaborative environments, regardless if you’re utilizing a sta-tionary HD video system in a board room or connecting via an all-in-one-HD-video solution from your home office.

There are a number of key factors in the successful deploy-ment and implementation of a HD video collaboration system including the following:

✓ Adoption: HD video conferencing is a fundamentally dif-ferent experience than legacy video conferencing, so it helps to have an executive “sponsor” who can act as a champion for the technology within your organization. Build the network initially to support the sponsor and her direct reports, and then extend it from there.



Case Study C: LifeSize’s Approach 65 ✓ Accessibility: Investment in HD video conferencing

equipment and services needs to balance cost with con-venient access to the network of HD video endpoints. Too few endpoints and you run the risk of frustrating users by establishing have and have not classes of employees, overtaxing a limited resource, and limiting the transformation of work collaboration styles to only a subset of the mobile workforce.

LifeSize works with businesses of all sizes and offers the highest-quality HD video communication available at the lowest total cost of ownership. With the best price/performance on the market, LifeSize reaches regional offices, branch locations, international partners, and even remote or mobile workers around the world.

Concentrating HD video conferencing resources into a few locations makes it all too easy for employees to avoid the service claiming too little convenience. Greater accessibility leads to greater usage and both deeper and more frequent collaboration.

✓ Quality: Users’ expectations for high-quality visual experiences have changed dramatically in the past few years because the home entertainment experience has changed. Falling short of users’ quality expectations in today’s business environment has severe operational consequences — users just won’t use the service.

All but the most demanding HD video offers work with access network connections of as little as 1 Mbps.

All three of these factors are key to success and should be recognized and planned for in order to maximize the impact of the service and collaboration across the organization.

An HD Video Case Study: Measuring the Impact in Dollars

In order to measure the return on investment of HD video, LifeSize had Forrester Consulting, a well-respected indepen-dent research firm, conduct a third-party evaluation of the LifeSize solution and the results achieved by a client.



Telework For Dummies, Dell Special Edition 66This three-month project measured the business and financial impact of HD video conferencing solutions. The study evalu-ated the Total Economic Impact (TEI) and potential return on investment (ROI) of implementing a LifeSize HD video confer-encing solution.

TEI not only measures costs and cost reduction (areas that are typically accounted for within IT) but also evaluates the enabling value of a technology in increasing the effectiveness of overall business processes.

The objective of the study was to identify and analyze four key elements that affect video conferencing investment deci-sions: cost, benefit, flexibility, and risk factors. Both quantita-tive and qualitative research was conducted with a division (2,500 employees) of a consumer electronics company that implemented LifeSize HD video conferencing across 47 offices, replacing another vendor’s legacy, ISDN-based video confer-encing system.

Using their qualitative experience and quantitative data points, the Forrester researchers were able to uncover numerous results. Here are some quantitative and qualitative benefits:

✓ 392 percent five-year, risk-adjusted ROI

✓ Lower TCO (approximately half the ongoing maintenance and support costs of other video conferencing solutions considered by the customer)

✓ Nine-month payback period

✓ Over a million dollar annual travel cost reduction

✓ Increased productivity and better work experience

✓ Higher-resolution video conferencing with lower band-width required

✓ Improved field selling

✓ Reduced carbon emissions

In addition to the quantifiable return on investment, the case study participant also noted the added soft benefits of high employee satisfaction as well as a spike in individual productivity. The soft benefits of being able to conveniently meet with colleagues, peers, and customers globally and still be accessible for important family commitments increased employee loyalty overall and reduced the employee attrition.



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