I am privileged enough to visit organisations of all shapes and sizes across many vertical markets and discuss technology strategies, IT strategies and more tactical deployments of technologies to address an urgent need to support the business. An area that comes up time and time again is the ability to provide flexible working and secure remote access. Bearing in mind that many of these organisations are looking to transition to Windows 7 and standardise their domain on Windows 2008 R2, many of them don’t know of the functionality of direct access.
With Microsoft’s release of Windows 7, users now have more flexibility than ever before to work remotely—and your IT staff can better manage security and compliance across desktops anywhere, anytime.
VPNs have several limitations, too. It’s one more application for users to learn, initiate and break. And that requires more troubleshooting and support, time that could be better spent on strategic initiatives. VPNs also make it tough to troubleshoot PCs remotely, since both computers must be available when the VPN session is running.
This is where Direct Access, a new feature available with Windows 7, changes the game. Now through Active Directory, users simply need Internet access to connect quickly and securely to your corporate network. A secure IPsec connection is created, giving the user access to your internal network just as if they are working from the corporate office.
Think about DirectAccess as a clientless VPN—there are no additional tools for your users to learn. And IT staff can work on any machine from anywhere in the world as long as users are connected to the Internet—they don’t even need to be logged in!
Direct Access is just one of the many new features of Windows 7 that allows users and IT professionals to be more productive and efficient everywhere. Interested, you should be your probably entitled to it! Call us to discuss it further.