Five Ways To Arm Your Mobile Workforce

Employees on the go often feel like they're stuck in an episode of Survivor gone horribly wrong. Poorly designed hotel networks, dead laptop batteries, spotty cell coverage, and no in-room print or fax capabilities--coupled with a deadline of yesterday--add up to reality-show levels of stress for the brave traveling souls trying to make business happen. Enabling your sales superstars to focus on their jobs, and not on battling technology issues, is an area where enterprise IT can add tremendous value with little risk. Better yet, the minimal investment required can be offset by the reduction in help desk calls alone. With a little planning, and some help from technology vendors, you can deliver new levels of connectivity, security, and--dare we say it--happiness, to your traveling contingent. We'll detail five top technologies that can make life on the road as productive as life in a cube, as well as three areas to watch out for. REMOTE OFFICE IN A BOX Vendors have finally heard our cries over all these countless hours of lost productivity and connectivity on the road. The remote office access systems available today are incredible compared with what was available just a few years ago. Aruba Networks and Cisco are among the players in the remote access market that are making life on the road more bearable. With Aruba's line of Mobility Controllers and Remote Access Points, the days of troubleshooting VPN client problems are gone. Simply supply your road warrior with a small access point that's plugged into any wired Ethernet connection. The AP finds the mobility controller located at corporate headquarters and builds an IPsec tunnel that's actually an extension of your enterprise wireless network. The Aruba AP is VoIP-friendly and quality-of-service-aware, so users can put down the expensive hotel phone and break out a wireless IP phone. If no hard-wired Ethernet connection is available, the Aruba AP-70 can backhaul the IPsec tunnel over a USB-based EV-DO or 3G cellular modem. The AP-70's HotelConnect feature allows the Aruba access point to register its MAC with the hotel's captive portal, but the service is activated via a device capable of associating with the Aruba access point and displaying the captive portal page. Alternatively, you can pre-activate the service at the front desk. The Aruba AP-70 can't tunnel through a hotel's Wi-Fi, so you'd need a hard-wired Ethernet jack, or you could use a cellular connection. This ability to extend the corporate wireless network anywhere, coupled with seamless cellular backhaul to the corporate office, makes the AP-70 worth the $595 list price for high-priority off-site workers. DISK ENCRYPTION Preventing data leakage is quickly becoming a top priority for IT, and there's no better place to start than with staffers who are taking your most sensitive material outside the corporate walls. If you own a copy of Windows Vista Enterprise or Ultimate, you already own an out-of-the-box system for full disk encryption via BitLocker. However, for true enterprise-ready encryption and data leakage protection, look to products from companies such as GuardianEdge Technologies, Mobile Armor, and Seagate Technology. With GuardianEdge's suite of products, you can encrypt the local hard drive and prevent leaks of data via external devices, keyloggers, screen captures, smartphones, and more. Policies can be defined and centrally distributed to managed devices, with full auditing and reporting capabilities. Don't expect disk encryption and data leakage protection to prevent every conceivable leak, but it's a step toward preventing all but the most determined of attackers from getting access to your most important data. VIRTUAL DESKTOPS Full disk encryption is sure to help IT breathe easier in the event of theft, but it offers little help to the traveling sales executive who just lost his laptop and needs to get some work done. The wonders of desktop virtualization and advancements in flash memory are bringing new options to on-the-go employees who've experienced digital disaster. When corporate applications are difficult to deploy via Terminal Services or application virtualization, complete virtual desktop environments can be the answer for off-site workers who need quick access to custom computing environments from a public PC. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) platforms are bleeding-edge technology in the eyes of many, but they're evolving quickly and are based on proven server virtualization technology. VMware VDI and Citrix XenDesktop both offer remote access to virtual desktops via the Internet, but Internet access can be severed at a moment's notice--and depending on your locale, don't count on your cellular data service, either. With VMware Pocket Assured Computing Environment, or ACE, a feature of VMware ACE 2.5 Enterprise, IT can deploy an ACE-enabled virtual desktop that can be used offline and deployed on removable media. You can now buy a low-cost 32-GB thumb flash drive and equip employees with a VMware virtual desktop that can be plugged into any hotel computer for quick access to a full suite of files and applications. IP TELEPHONY Enterprise IP telephony has gone from fad to necessity in a relatively short period of time. Voice over IP is one of the few areas in IT where the up-front capital expenditure can be quickly paid back with savings over traditional telecom operating expenses. These potential savings are much greater if you have a large contingent of workers overseas who need to stay connected or home-based office staff. Cisco and Avaya are vying to be top dog in the unified communications and VoIP space, and both have impressive arrays of products designed for the road and the home office. On the home front, Cisco's Unified IP Phone 7985G should satisfy even your most discerning executive. For videoconferencing, the 7985G sports an 8-inch LCD and built-in camera capable of pumping out 768 Kbps of IP video yielding 30 frames per second using H.263. The built-in two-port, 802.1Q-capable, 10/100-Mb switch allows for seamless quality of service and provides for convenient connectivity to a networked printer at the home office. Avaya is preparing to release the IP 9670G Executive Touch Screen phone, which provides full touch-screen access to all standard voice-mail system functions, as well as a standard suite of applications, such as calculators and stock and weather tickers. The capabilities of the 9670G also can be extended through the ability to create custom applications via the Wireless Markup Language. For a more portable form factor, the Avaya 3641 IP Wireless Phone resembles a traditional cordless telephone but connects to 802.11a/b/g wireless networks. If you're traveling with an Aruba wireless gateway and an Avaya 3641, then you have a highly functional roaming cubicle. PRINTING AND POWER As a result, you might spot veteran road warriors armed with a printer like the 5-pound Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet H470wbt Mobile Printer. With its built-in Bluetooth and WLAN capability, coupled with its ability to print directly from a memory card, PDA, or digital camera, and powered by an optional cigarette-lighter AC adapter, you can now print at a blazing 18 pages per minute in color, or 22 ppm in black and white, while stopped at a traffic light (though we recommend parking the car before booting up). The printer lists for $350; depending on your budget and need, it might be cheaper to buy one than to trust that a copy center will be nearby and open when someone needs to print on the road. Finally, it takes power to keep your superstars productive and happy, so take a look at some of the developments in battery technology. HP appears to be leading the pack with its EliteBook 6930p laptop, which has an optional expansion battery that can provide up to 24 hours of uninterrupted usage.