Net/Systems Management /

VPN study results show that real users are realizing real benefits

By John Morency
Network World on Network/Systems Management, 07/12/99

Some time ago, we solicited the readers of this newsletter for participation in a study whose objective was to determine whether the rumored benefits of VPNs were real or simply a fantasy of both the vendor and service provider community that wanted to push their usage.
I'm happy to report that, based upon the responses we have received, numerous readers are deriving substantial cost benefits from their VPN implementations and plan to expand the scope of those implementations in the not-too-distant future.

The first interesting study result is that users are currently implementing a far greater number of enterprise-managed VPNs than service-provider VPNs. Only about 5% of the total study sample actually opted for the latter approach.

In general, this is largely due to the belief of most users that handing over control of some or all of their wide area networks is something that they should begin doing.

This concern still largely centers around service providers' ability to sustain the service levels they claim. In addition, users perceive a lack of industrial-strength service reporting that would make them feel comfortable that they are not compromising support quality by opting for a managed service approach.

The vast majority of respondents were utilizing VPNs as a means of offering a more flexible and cost-effective remote access service to their end users. By contrast, only one quarter of the users are deploying some form of intranet or extranet VPN. I can personally relate to the implementation of RAS VPN services, since this is exactly the VPN application that we have deployed within Renaissance as an alternative to costly 800-number dial-in service. In our case, we have deployed Nortel Contivity boxes that support users who access corporate through GTE Dialinx service POPs.

Other key results of our study showed that nearly half of the users reported saving at least $100 in connect cost per VPN user. And nearly 75% of the users reported some form of reduction in the annual cost per user for either remote access or site-to-site services.

In addition, nearly two-thirds of our respondents reported requiring no more than 10% of their total support time to support end users across the VPN, and the great majority of these users actually reported that the required percentage of support time was 5% or less.

If there are readers out there who did participate in the study but have not yet received a soft copy of the study results, please e-mail me at jmorency@rens.com and I'll have one forwarded to you.