How Cisco IT Provides Secure and Flexible Remote Access for Mobile Employees and Home Offices

In August 2001 the Cisco Systems IT remote access group faced a crisis. Their primary high-speed remote access solution in the United States, based on DSL, was about to disappear. This crisis situation forced them to consider other options, and forced to accelerate the migration to a VPN solution. That single move has not only saved money, it's improved client service and client satisfaction, and paved the way for new services they couldn't have considered with the other remote access offerings. This case study discusses in detail the business advantages to Cisco of a robust remote access solution like the Internet-based VPN, and then details the background, service deployment issues, support issues, cost savings, and other benefits of the VPN migration.