One of the biggest challenges facing the networking industry today is how to deal with the
needs of the branch office. As businesses become more global and more decentralized, the role of the branch office becomes ever more important. In fact, more than 90 percent of employees now work outside of corporate headquarters, according to Nemertes Research Inc. These employees are in sales, customer support, R&D, administration, manufacturing, marketing, finance, and other vital functions that contribute to the bottom line. And they are using sophisticated applications such as customer relationship management (CRM),
enterprise resource planning (ERP), and supply chain management (SCM).
Yet historically, the branch office has been largely ignored. A Nemertes survey found that 73 percent of enterprise participants had not created a comprehensive strategy—including cost-benefit analysis—to support remote workers. Headquarters typically has the latest
networking technologies, services, and applications, and also has the IT staff required to keep the network up and running 24x7. However, despite the increasingly crucial role they play, branch offices have simply been extensions of the central IT network and equipped only with connectivity nodes.
Now more branches have their own devices and systems to support mission critical applications, but they typically have a smaller set of capabilities than headquarters
and little or no IT staff, making it very difficult to cope locally with any problems
that arise. Since not all networking devices at the branch can be managed remotely, IT personnel from headquarters may need to go on-site to troubleshoot problems. As a result, the total cost of ownership of branch office networking can be quite high, both in business and monetary terms, yet until recently no one has been paying attention to this issue.
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