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Fairfield
County Business Connections |
With more and more information stored on our computers, it becomes increasingly difficult to function without it. But what can you do when you are "on the road" (or on vacation!) and need access to your home computer? How do you support your "virtual organization" that needs to work together as if they were all on the same network? We offer several solutions. Solution 1: Remote desktop. These programs have been popular for years. Your use a computer to remotely access your main computer. PCAnywhere is one such program. They used to use phone lines to connect; now they all connect through the internet as well. We use a program called VNC (free download available at http://www.ultravnc.com) as well as a feature of Windows 7 Professional called Remote Desktop. Solution 2: Virtual Private Network (VPN). This is an extremely powerful solution that used to be difficult to implement and was used only by large companies. The technology and operating systems are now to the point where they can be easily deployed for small businesses and even homes. Essentially it allows you to connect a remote computer to your home or office network - securely through the internet - and it is just as if you were in the office. Here are some examples of the power of this solution. Example 1: Home network. I use remote desktop when I am traveling. I bring my work computer with me (for work stuff), but in the evenings I often want to check my email or work on other personal things. I dial-up to the internet (or use a high-speed connection if available in the hotel), and then connect to our network through the VPN. I can now access all my personal documents. This works great for programs that I have on my work computer (Word, Excel, etc.), but not for other programs like my taxes. While I have access to my tax data files, the tax program is not installed on my work computer so I can't do anything with them. I attach to my home computer with Remote Desktop. Now the screen on my notebook displays the screen of my desktop at home - and I run my tax program just as if I were sitting at my desk at home. Example 2: Virtual company. Many of our customers are becoming more "virtual" companies, with many employees working outside the office. One difficulty they face is sharing files. Everyone in the office is used to putting files on a common server (that gets backed up regularly!!) as a means of sharing information and collaborating. But what about people outside the office - how do they access the files? By setting up a VPN, they merely connect to the internet, then establish a VPN connection to the office and it is as if they are sitting in the office on the network!! Example 3: Shared application. Two not-for-profits I work with have a similar problem. They have a single-user program that runs on a computer in the office, but want people outside the office to be able to access it. The first organization uses accounting and fund raising software, and everyone that needs to access it comes into the office - often just to use the program. With Remote Desktop, authorized users can access the computer from home. The second organization is virtual (no office) and has a database application that they would like to make available to multiple people. By setting up the computer with the database application for Remote Desktop, authorized users could use the computer remotely to use (and update) the database. If you think some type of remote access to your network or computer would help your organization, please contact us to discuss some different strategies.
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not responsible for data loss under any circumstances!!
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