Telecommuting technologies that enable people to work from home

Our cities are getting more and more congested because people are becoming more and more greedy. Everyone wants to have a car, and if possible, the biggest gas-guzzling model at that! Obviously, this attitude is going to land us in huge congestion problems sooner than latter. In this context, why don’t companies allow a sizable amount of their workforce to work from home? Let us look at certain Telecommuting technologies that enable companies to allow employees to work from a remote location (home), in this article.

Why Telecommute?

The penetration of high speed broadband technology to almost everywhere, has enabled people to do more from a remote location than what they could have done, say ten years earlier. Our cities have become so crowded, mainly due to individuals insisting that they want to travel using their own cars (its more like a status-symbol) instead of using public transport or any other efficient means of commuting. In fact, there maybe more than one car per house, these days!

Employees are fed up of having to travel many Kilo Meters/ Miles during peak-hour traffic to reach their office on time. Many of them spend 2-3 hours just for traveling every day! This demoralizes employees and affects their productivity in both their official duties as well as personal obligations.

Of course, the environmental pollution contributed by each car on the road is immeasurable! Office spaces are at a premium and employers may also want to cut down on infrastructure costs. That doesn’t mean that all our offices can be closed from tomorrow, and people can work from their homes. But it does mean that a substantial number of people (whose job profiles allow them to do so) can explore working from home for a majority of the time and visit the office only as and when required.

Let us look at some telecommuting technologies that enable people to work from home.

Telecommuting access technologies:

High speed broadband Internet – Of course, this is the first and foremost technology that enables faster Internet access and hence telecommuting, in the first place. So, high speed Internet Leased Lines are required on the company end and high speed broadband is required on the telecommuter end.

Virtual Private Network (VPN) – A VPN connection from your home Internet to a corporate network is a must because VPN encrypts the sessions and sends all the messages through a secure tunnel over the Internet. Otherwise, sensitive corporate information might be sent in clear-text over the Internet, which is not so advisable. A client based VPN might be more secure as only the laptop/ PC that is pre-loaded with a VPN client can access the network.

Two Factor Authentication System – Single factor authentication mostly refers to user-name/ password check, before allowing access to the remote network. But often, this alone may not be sufficient as user-names/ passwords can be stolen. So, it is recommended to use another authentication mechanism along with user-name/password. The second password could be a real time password generated on a token/ card/ mobile/ USB-based drive or any other two-factor authentication method.

Desktop Virtualization Client – Desktop Virtualization is a technology which runs the actual desktop sessions on powerful servers (in the data center) and transfers only the image of the results to individual PC’s/ thin-clients or even mobile devices. Certain Desktop Virtualization solutions are optimized for remote access (especially on slower connections). Further, all the software/ applications/ updates, etc are handled from the server end (which is under the direct purview of the IT department) and hence there could be a good deal of control over the individual desktop sessions without sacrificing security and without having to depend on the individual users.

Remote Desktop Access: There are certain remote desktop software applications that allow employees to access and log-in to their desktop computer from any PC/ laptop (that is authorized to access the same) from a remote location. They can do everything that they can normally do from their desktop (including accessing files and applications) from the remote location itself.

Telecommuting Communication / Collaboration technologies:

VOIP / IP Telephony: What is the use of working from a remote place, when one is not able to communicate with colleagues/ business partners and customers in the same way that they were able to, when they were in office? That’s what an IP Phone/ VOIP Soft-Client loaded to the remote Computer helps to do. One can connect to the corporate IP Telephony/ VOIP Infrastructure from a remote location (over the Internet) and make calls using the company infrastructure.

Video Conferencing/ Video Phones: There is nothing like physically able to see a person and communicate with them. That’s exactly what video conferencing systems enable one to do. There are software based H.264 compliant video conferencing clients that can be loaded on to the remote PC and one can use this to conduct video conferencing sessions between employees and the management team in the office. Employees might even use dedicated Video Phones (which have a display and camera) to visually communicate with people, over the Internet.

Online Meeting places & Collaboration: A whole team can virtually meet online using communication tools like Web-Ex, GotoMeeting, Skype/Yugma, 3D-Modelling, etc. There are a variety of tools to collaborate with your peers while working on the same project, like Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365, etc. One can even use Google+ Hangouts to hold instant video conferencing sessions between team members.

Online ERP/ CRP Applications: Most of the employees access ERP (Enterprise Resource Management) or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) applications from the office. Many of these applications are now web-enabled, and employees can access them from home using a simple browser/ software client. There are even hosted/ cloud-based ERP/CRM solutions. In fact, many software applications used by enterprises today are web-enabled.

Telecommuting Security technologies:

• There are firewalls/ UTM devices employed by most of the companies that can enforce policies on who is allowed to access which corporate resource. For example, a worker (based on his Login-ID), can be given access only to a particular server/ application and that too using a limited set of ports only. Everything else can be blocked.
• PC / Laptop devices could be configured with personal firewalls and Anti-virus/Anti-malware software that can protect them from potential security threats.
• It is possible (and recommended) to encrypt all the corporate data stored in the user laptop so that no corporate information is leaked out if the laptop is stolen or unauthorized people get to access the PC. Even session locking can be enforced so that the user is automatically logged out after 15 minutes of in-activity (for example).
• There are technologies available to periodically back-up all the corporate related data (on the remote PC) to the corporate servers so that they are safe and are not lost due to disk failures/ accidental deletions, etc.
• If Desktop Virtualization is used to allow remote access, security is even more enhanced because all the desktop sessions are actually running on the corporate data centers with strict firewall policies. Updates/ patching, etc. could also be carried out from a centralized location, by trained IT staff.
• There are certain flash drives that are made exclusively for tele-workers. All corporate data are stored in this flash drive only, and they can be run using the applications installed in the remote PC. Data cannot be copied from the flash drive, but more data can be stored inside. Once the flash drive is inserted, the office desktop is replicated, without access to the personal desktop. And once it is removed, its only the personal desktop, without any trace of the office data. With this, employers need not worry about intellectual property/ data loss. You can get more details about this technology from here.

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