Strategic Innovation

By Lance Perry, vice president, IT Customer Strategy and Success, Cisco

Editor's note: Innovation is not just the ability to implement new programs. Innovation is also the ability to implement new solutions to old problems, and to improve processes or reduce costs as a result. In this month's IT@Work column, we look at how Cisco's IT department created an enterprise-class telecommuting program to increase employee efficiency and productivity.

In 2002, approximately 37 percent of the working population in the United States was classified as teleworkers—either part-time or full-time telecommuters or day extenders (employees who log in during evenings or weekends to stretch their workday). The consulting firm Deloitte predicted recently that by 2008, 41 million corporate employees worldwide may spend at least one day a week teleworking, and 100 million will work from home at least one day a month.

It's no surprise that more companies are discovering the benefits of teleworking, which extends a company's network infrastructure to remote and home-based workforces. Cisco has found that many teleworkers are 10 percent to 40 percent more productive each day as a result, not only because they have fewer interruptions, but also because they can eliminate commute time. Employees report they can balance their work and home lives, which improves their morale. And it's easier for Cisco to retain valuable employees, even if a spousal relocation requires them to move away from a company location.

Remote access also supports the company's globalization and collaboration efforts. Employees regularly need to collaborate across continents and time zones. Remote access eases the burden of having to attend meetings outside of regular business hours—workers in the United States can schedule early-morning conference calls to Europe and the Middle East, and late-evening calls to India and the Asia-Pacific region. Remote access also provides employees with the flexibility to work from home in the case of severe weather, natural disasters, or other emergencies.

How We Started

To facilitate remote access, we initially deployed a software-based VPN solution. Loaded on a worker's home computer, VPN software supported most of that worker's needs, as it provided the necessary security and authentication features.

But it quickly became clear that the VPN client supported only the device on which it was installed. The network would not recognize any other devices in a home office—additional PCs, print servers, or printers. Furthermore, as IP phones became more prevalent, we realized that there was no jack on a PC or laptop into which employees could plug one of these phones. Cisco IP Communicator, a software-based IP phone, partially resolved this issue, but the lack of quality of service over the Internet (compared to our own leased lines) caused problems. When an IP phone user sent large file packets over their Internet link while talking on the phone, voice quality would suffer. Either static or gaps of silence occurred as a result.

Within our security technology group at Cisco IT, we determined that a hardware-based VPN would better meet the needs of a home-office environment, and we set out to create a next-generation solution. We incorporated Cisco IOS Software, which supported a new architecture called dynamic multipoint VPN (DMVPN). This lets remote users communicate with each other—and accommodate all the devices in their home office—without having to connect through a Cisco corporate VPN concentrator. The setup requires a Cisco router in the home office, but it supports multiple devices and provides the necessary security.

More than 500 Cisco teleworkers participated in the initial trials of this solution. Each router had to be manually configured by a Cisco IT technician before being sent out. Deploying the solution to a wider group, however, would require that we address some practical issues related to provisioning and supporting a large-scale solution.

Part II examines the synergies Cisco and Linksys achieved through infrastructure integration.