The topic of the virtual/home office or remote business user is coming up more often today. A recurring question is, "How do I stay as productive from a home office as from a traditional office?" One answer to that question is the VPN connection. The VPN or Virtual Private Network allows the secure, encrypted extension of the corporate network to a remote location using the internet as the connection media.
Most remote workers typically have a laptop with a VPN client for computing. This has traditionally left the cell phone as the voice communications instrument. This arrangement can be very difficult to use for any extended period as well as unmanageable from a cost perspective, especially when international calling is required. Avaya has created and made available for some time, a firmware load for an IP phone that includes a VPN client to provide remote/home office, business grade communications. The IPsec VPN client is standards based and has been tested with VPN gateways from manufacturers such as Juniper, Cisco, Nortel and Check Point, to name a few. This allows the user to have the same phone and extension they would use in their traditional brick and mortar office in their remote/home office.
There are many benefits to the VPN arrangement. User satisfaction is high since there is virtually no training required. They can literally use the same type of IP phone at both locations. Administration in the switch is non-existent as it is the same extension. The user merely logs in at home or at work using a login process that is similar to logging into voice mail. All headsets that work with the Avaya IP Phone work with this as well, as it is a regular IP phone. This is helpful in today’s global society as many executive use this on a regular basis as a way to reach out to offices in other countries and time zones from a home office.
Some of additional benefits of this technology are: business continuity planning (how do you work if you can’t get to the office), better work/life balance, and more effective cost management as all calls are from the corporate communications server allowing not only call detail recording (better records) but the use of the corporate negotiated long distance rates as well.
