VPN's

Yeah, one of my favorite issues.
You can explain/sell it like this. The DSL and Broadband user base is expanding everyday. More and more of our employees are getting DSL or Cable modems, only they can't utilize this speed boost to work from home because we are still using a RAS server that only reaches speeds of 28k. With VPN, we would utilize our existing network bandwidth, and allow users to enter through it. In other words instead of being limited to 28k, our employees can use what ever speed they get from DSL. If 1mb then they connect here at 1mb. This gives them the capability to not only check e-mail as they are today but to actually run applications and access files on any server on this network, since all traffic is encrypted thisposses minimal security risks.

Now that you have heard the speach go learn about the popular products out there. Here are a few I have used all of which are pretty good. http://sonicwall.com , http://freegate.com , http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/iaabu/pix/ . etc.. Good luck.

Good info from Aaron. You can also poke around some of the major IT web sites. ZDnet, ITworld.com, etc. TechRepublic also has an article up on VPN's right now in their Support section.

VPN's are a hot subject right now and there is tons of info out there. Finding that info that will impress the managers ($$$), well that's a bit harder.... :) but it can be done. We just started using our VPN. We get more productivity out of our employees now, so its already starting to "pay for itself."

-Heath

To make the best case for VPN you need to know what alternatives are being discussed but at the bottom line, the most successful arguments are usually financial.

For example, one organization with which I've worked has just implemented remote operations 3500 miles away. The first few months were accomplished with a "tollfree" dialup number for network access. At $0.25 per minute or more, charges of many thousand dollars per month were accruing plus network operations by dialup were painfully slow.

In this scenario, the time to recover the investment in a Cisco VPN concentrator was less than 2 months. That gets the CFO types really jazzed.

Or let's say the alternative is leased lines to fixed locations, either frame relay or point-to-point. Figure out the costs of those lines and then compare that with the costs of a high-speed line to the nearest ISP POP. In most cases, the cost for the VPN scenario will be less, often substantially.

Finally, if you have a large population of telecommuters with DSL/cable access at home, even with a company contribution to the costs of that access, the economics of VPN are usually favorable to those of dialup (especially if there will be inter-LATA dialup calls).

Oh, there is user productivity improvement but that's a soft number and it's the hard dollars that really impress.

paul