Feature

posted 11 May 2004 in Volume 7 Issue 1

Keep on moving: Enabling mobile access and remote working

Working practices are changing and, as firms become more international, the demand for facilitating remote working, combined with an increasing employee demand for flexibility, means that firms are working hard to keep up with the times. Lee Hanley, IT director at Richards Butler, assesses the challenges of mobile working and suggests some practical ways for keeping firms in the fast lane.

When I first joined Richards Butler, I immediately became aware of the laptop challenge. As an international law firm, we have a presence in key locations to service our clients abroad. However, the practice itself was much broader than at first it appeared. Over 40 per cent of all matters have an overseas context of some kind and not necessarily in places where we have offices. I began to get e-mails along the lines of “while I was in India…” or “during my visit to Korea…” Many of the lawyers were cheerfully setting off into the wild-blue yonder, only to discover on arrival that:

The laptop wouldn’t dial-up or connect;
They were missing a critical cable or adapter;
They had completely forgotten how to actually dial-in and work remotely.

The health-check approach

Managing the demanding traveller is an art form in itself. That is why I established the concept of the ‘health check’. It’s an offer for someone in IT to check and test the laptop prior to departure, even though that may only be 15 minutes before leaving.

The benefits are obvious: IT gets to know who is travelling where; the user gets piece of mind; and with luck, we might even get the lawyers to attend a brief training session. Once the lawyers make the connection between the success of their connectivity efforts and the pre-departure health check, word will spread fast.

Connectivity complications

However, for travellers, having a laptop that works is only one aspect of the process. There are a number of other connectivity pitfalls. Traditional dial-up involves a long-distance phone call over international links. From many countries, this can result in poor line quality, frequent breaks in service and slow responses.

A solution that we have adopted became available when Windows 2000 was introduced. We were able to move away from the RAS software that came with previous versions of Windows and move into the world of virtual private networks (VPN). VPN allows you to use a standard internet connection to establish a secure link back to the office.

The advantages of this are two fold. One is that you can avoid using the international telephone exchanges. Second, using a service such as that provided by iPass, you can dial into a local internet-service-provider (ISP) network using a local number. Since the connection arrives on a digital network early in the call, it is faster, better at handling digital traffic and more secure. An additional charge is levied on each call by iPass. A by-product of this is that the costs are managed centrally, which avoids hitting the lawyer’s credit card with a hefty amount and reduces accounting administration costs with a single invoice to the firm. Your own ISP may have a point of presence abroad as well, so for some countries a third-party IPS service such as iPass is not required.

Another pitfall to connectivity is the complete lack of telecommunications at the destination, often a by-product of the lawyer being on an adventure holiday with an unexpected deal in the offing. The promise of high-speed data connections for the mobile phones of the future with the 3G standard has not diminished its current attraction as a dial-up method. My advice is that this should only be used as a last resort and lawyers should be advised of their unreliability, although for us, with a large shipping practice, they have been essential at times.

Thin and web clients

For low bandwidth and poor-connectivity situations, such as those encountered by using a mobile phone as a modem, the only real solution is to deliver web-based applications. The out-of-the-box Microsoft Outlook Web Client, is a very effective application. It doesn’t require the synchronisation of server/client that the full application does and consequently needs less bandwidth. The application can be secured using the 128-bit SSL certificate option in the Internet Explorer browser.

A thin-client solution, such as Citrix Metaframe or Windows Terminal Server, requires extra knowledge and expertise to deploy, but for large firms, provides good resilience and excellent disaster-recovery options.

Thin clients don’t require the actual applications that used to be loaded on the lawyers PC or laptop. Instead, the lawyer is running the applications on a server in the office, but only receiving the images on the laptop screen. This means that little bandwidth is used and applications that usually require intense client/server interaction can be quite fast in low bandwidth situations.

This means that thin clients can be deployed on PC’s in homes that do not confirm to corporate standard, without risking the spread of viruses and reducing the likelihood of causing problems with personal software. This is perfect for situations where a lawyer is unexpectedly at home but needs full-service access to the office.

Citrix can be secured using two-stage authentication in the same way as a normal laptop using VPN, thereby ensuring that security is maintained.

Security concerns

Securing data on the move is always a concern. Extra security can be unpopular as it adds further complexity and more things to remember for busy and stressed lawyers. However, client confidentiality is paramount and the risks of losing a laptop while travelling are much greater.

Two-stage authentication using a PIN code system is one of the most secure methods of protecting data. We use the RSA SecureID product, which matches a changing code on a key fob against a PIN code during login to authenticate the user. Even if the fob is lost with the laptop (and they often are, despite procedures that state the contrary), the system is difficult to crack. The IT department can disable the fobs remotely through the administration programme in an emergency.

What do remote workers really want?

Like most firms today, we have experienced an explosion in laptop interest. Much of this is based on genuine business needs, but the firm needs to bear in mind that this is not always the case. Each requirement needs to have a business case attached to it, since the costs of supporting a large laptop population are alarming. You need to consider what other motivations staff may have for wanting a laptop and consider alternatives.

For example, some of this laptop interest has been initiated on the back of the mistaken belief that a laptop is a way of gaining more desk space. In fact, this is unlikely to be achievable in an environment where health and safety concerns and risk management govern workspace strategy. In fact, you often end up with less desk space, with a requirement for a full-sized keyboard, mouse and VDU if you use your laptop over the minimum amount of hours per day. Further to that, there may be a similar requirement if it’s used at home, adding further cost to the firm and taking up more of the space at home.

Then there is the ‘shiny kit’ syndrome. Let’s face it; laptops are very desirable status symbols with the designs getting better and the whole ethos of mobility suggesting prestige and importance. This needs to be carefully controlled and managed, with a set of benchmarks for defining a mobile worker and a profile of activity with which to judge the suitability of the potential recipient.

Lawyers need to be aware that desktops are often much faster, so there is a trade off between maximum efficiency in the office versus maximum mobility outside it. The firm as a business needs to be aware of the frankly horrific hidden costs of supporting large numbers of laptop users. The financial drawbacks include the losses through theft and spillage, the repair costs, the general level of lower reliability and the short lifecycles, which necessitate frequent rotation from power users to occasional users. These assets need to be worked hard to justify their costs.

Probation periods are handy with a review of usage and the lawyers’ general experience: was it as the user expected? Would they like to revert to desktop? Did they use it as much out of the office as they thought they would?

Operating pools of loan laptops are another effective way of avoiding unnecessary laptop deployments. People sometimes think they will be travelling more than they actually do. Examination of the loan records can reveal those who are frequent users from those who are not. If a lawyer is not able to demonstrate consistent usage, they will be unable to deliver a business case for a permanent laptop.

In addition, there are now a number of different options for mobile working that cost less and are easier and more reliable to use.

What are the alternatives?

My own experience has shown that around 70 per cent of mobile workers only require access to e-mail. Document production is still serviced best by dedicated document-production specialists rather than lawyers. Principally, lawyers need to stay in touch, be seen to be available and react to events as necessary, as expected by their clients. The PDA and, increasingly, the mobile phone are now seen as an effective means of fulfilling those simple goals.

Different manufacturers have followed different paths towards that goal. Some are complex devices attempting to emulate Windows and laptop functionality, yet also spilling over into the mobile-entertainment arena. Other devices, such as Blackberry, focus on a particular specialist area. At the other end of the spectrum are the mobile-phone manufacturers hoping to get into the PDA market.

A wise strategy is to pick a single platform for the firm and concentrate on that. The firm needs to avoid being driven by consumer trends, so that the support burden is not increased by functionality and use that is unnecessary to the core business need. This ensures that the service is kept at its best by a concentration of expertise in one area.

For Richards Butler, the Blackberry has been the ideal laptop substitute. Its strength is firmly within the area of e-mail delivery, thereby satisfying a high proportion of mobile functionality. Its ease of use is appreciated by lawyers justifiably reluctant to learn yet more complex IT skills. Security is also strong as the devices can be disabled remotely if lost. Encryption is strong, although encrypted messages from Exchange, etc., cannot be read, which itself has a security advantage.

I have concerns about the viability of mobile phones as PDAs, as the complexity of mobiles is increasing and the smaller screens and lack of an effective keyboard hinder e-mail usage. Some devices seek to overcome these limitations, but become heavy and unwieldy. Those that remain small remain popular since people will always have a preference for the smallest possible devices, with an unfortunate compromise on usability and productivity.

The Pocket PC and Palm devices remain strong contenders in this field when linked to GPRS services, but tend to engender higher support costs, with more upgrades and patches to manage.

Most PDAs use a mobile provider’s GPRS network to connect, which relies on partnership agreements with local providers, and an effective GPRS network in each country visited. This needs to be clarified and made obvious to the lawyers so these limitations are known and alternatives such as a laptop can be provided when necessary.

Unfortunately, mobile providers have not been able to provide multi-Sim capability.

This would allow Sims to be moved between devices, retaining the same mobile number, or having more than one Sim with the same number. Such a capability would allow switching between mobile solutions much easier, as required by circumstances.

Unified-messenger solutions

A further alternative to either the laptop or PDA is the deployment of a unified-messenger solution. These solutions provide a gateway between telephony and e-mail, through linking the PABX to the Exchange or Lotus Notes servers. The advantage of this is that using any telephone or mobile phone, lawyers can dial in to their corporate voicemail system and access e-mail. New text to speech engines are being developed, which can effectively read e-mails out to the caller. Further integration is possible with desktop-to-desktop faxing solutions so that details of faxes that have been received can be provided.

Unified-messenger solutions are particularly good for emergency situations where connectivity is not available or pre-planned, allowing lawyers access to voicemail, e-mail and faxes from basic handset equipment. Further integration and control over e-mail is likely to develop in the future as the convergence between the two, traditionally separate technologies continues apace.

Future PDA developments

PDA products are successfully developing into other areas of importance for mobile working, for example, they make effective tri-band phones.

There is strong potential for further services to be deployed on PDAs, such as access to information in databases, time recording and web-based applications on intranets and extranets.

Some of this potential does require a skilled programming team, but there are a growing number of commercial applications.

The power of wireless

The most significant changes in mobile technologies are currently occurring in the wireless area. Developments are quickly proceeding, with the promise of complete mobile working for laptop users within a short space of time. Such developments will overcome the present limitations of using the mobile phone to connect to remote services. Wireless services allow travellers to hop onto a local wireless service point for remote connectivity, such as those operated by T-mobile in the Starbucks chain. With this technology, current black spots, such as those on planes and trains, can be opened up.

The current standard called WiFi is slow but will provide a usable service for those using applications that are web based or accessed through thin-client technologies such as Citrix and Windows Terminal Services. However, the coverage and business model for investment by wireless providers is patchy and is set for upheaval as the optimists with poor business plans get driven out. There is little reciprocity between competing networks at present.

Other options include the wireless PCMCIA cards that fit into laptops and which use the main mobile providers’ GPRS networks. These provide more bandwidth and wider coverage than WiFi does. On the way are even higher speed wireless cards that support the long-awaited 3G standard offering higher bandwidths.

As with many technology solutions, the most important factor in providing an effective mobile-working platform for your firm is developing an understanding of the needs of its lawyers and their clients.

To do this, you need to develop a culture and service whereby they can quickly and easily notify IT of their travel plans and requirements (hopefully with sufficient notice) and get access to effective advice on the options.

Once that is in place, you will be able to deliver a flexible, high-quality solution and support lawyers effectively in an area of technology that is increasingly becoming a critical competitive factor in the global marketplace.

Lee Hanley is IT director at Richards Butler. He can be contacted at: lmh@richardsbutler.com.