You bring up a good point, Chris, in that companies need to focus not only on connectivity, but also on quality of experience. Mobile WAN acceleration and remote access solutions are good tools, but companies really need to look at a holistic strategy for pandemic planning and business continuity.
Companies need to have a plan in place for providing workers with access that is reliable, high-performing, and secure. Security is an issue that didn't come up in your post, but I wanted to point it out because hackers will likely try to target businesses when they are most vulnerable. During our current economic malaise, it's also important to create a solution that won't break the bank. Too many companies overspend in preparing for a worst-case scenario when there may have been more cost effective solutions for them.
One approach I'd love to see you address more is managed services and how they might provide a way for companies to make flu and overall DR preparations more cost-efficient because businesses can purchase services as an operational expense, versus purchasing equipment as a capital expense. For example, rather than setting up their own access gateways, which takes a lot of both time and money, companies can use a provider's hosted SSL VPN service as well as leverage that provider?s staff to manage the solution. Performance-improving tools such as WAN optimization and hosted security and log management services may also be offered by service providers as part of an overall package.
Your article does a great job of emphasizing that H1N1 is a real threat that companies should prepare for, and planning needs to be about more than just access. But in addition to performance, security as well as cost-effectiveness should be priorities too.
- Kathy Lynch, Virtela
Discussion on:
Message 2 of 1
The best of ZDNet, delivered
ZDNet Newsletters
Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox
