If there is one thing IT thrives on, it's consistency. OK, consistency and highly caffeinated beverages. No matter how rough the raw ore of technology is, users expect IT to forge it into dependable services. Nothing irritates people more than when the seemingly well-tuned, well-oiled computing engine suddenly throws a rod through the hood. Months of flawless operation drift by unnoticed, but users can remember the last time the system went down faster than they can recall their own kids' names.
As technology matures, it gets more predictable. Services are packaged and delivered more simply when there is less underlying variation, when vendors and IT have more field experience, and when user expectations can be properly set. Support becomes less expensive with maturity, too. Standard solutions enable centralized support, and centralization always reduces cost. But centralized support requires control, and the lack of control is what makes broadband for business so hard.
If your company is like most, you probably don't have a formal broadband policy -- but I'd bet somebody in your organization is using broadband to access your network and that a bunch of others want it. Employees working from home who have broadband but are forced to use dial-up connections are not big IT fans. Yet taking broadband users in one by one is foolish and expensive. Now is the time to formalize a support strategy for fixed remote offices.
A fixed remote office broadband strategy has nothing to do with IT choosing DSL, cable, fixed wireless, wireless LAN or satellite access; support one and you'll end up supporting them all. Each of these technologies will take a nontrivial slice of the market, and users will darn well use whatever they can find. A successful policy starts with the recognition that IT cannot control public networks.
A broadband strategy has little, if anything, to do with choosing a carrier. In the broad view, it may look as though you have a multitude of providers from which to choose. In the United States (which continues to fall further behind in broadband, but that's a topic for another day), a dozen carriers each serves more than 400,000 broadband subscribers. Yet consistent coverage is an illusion. Even the biggest carriers are too small to provide nationwide service. Large buyers are lucky to get 20 percent coverage from any single carrier.
Assume the public network is not in your control, and focus your support strategy on what is. There are many elements of a support strategy and a few best practices for business.
Ask which users can benefit and what they should get.
Create no more than a handful of usage types and map them to packaged solutions.
Should access be allowed from noncompany PCs? Answer: No.
How will security be assured? Answer: VPNs alone aren't enough; use personal firewalling or appliances, ban split tunneling, install policy-management and content controls on PCs, use back-end intrusion detection and insist on strong authentication.
Should you deploy VPN clients or use SSL access through a browser? Answer: It depends on the application, but SSL is looking better all the time.
Will users find an access provider on their own, through IT or through a third-party vendor? Answer: It depends on your users' profiles and how serious you are about user support.
I could go on, but you get the idea. There's much more to remote broadband than simply finding a carrier. A broadband strategy is not about access technology; it's about users, appropriate-use policies, instrumentation, sourcing and support. But most of all, it's about expectations.
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