One of the many ways that companies are employing to reduce costs is to have more of their workers work from a virtual office. With the exception of sales people, this entails allowing the employee to work from a home office, connected to the company through the Internet.

Before the advent of virtual private networks, corporations were very limited in what they could have employees do from a home office location. Essentially, it has made working from home a viable option for many businesses who couldn’t even consider it before. The added flexibility of allowing employees to work from home has increased their options and workforce.

Employees accessing a company’s computer from their home offices have the same work capability as employees working on site. Additionally, the privacy of working from a home office actually increases the work efficiency of most employees. The distractions of workmates, meetings, the company newsletter, workplace gossip and breaks is essentially eliminated; allowing employees to concentrate on their work.

With modern communications, specifically e-mail and cellular phones, remote employees can maintain contact with their bosses, co-workers and others that they may need to communicate with as part of their jobs. Once again, this is able to be accomplished without the normal distractions that happen in the workplace.

Since a virtual private network allows connection with the company’s mainframe, employees working from remote locations, such as their homes, have full access to the company’s information and are able to perform any task requiring computer access. Beforehand, remote employees were limited in both their access to information and their input into the system.

These remote employees can work anywhere, with instant access to the company. Should an employee move or leave town, it is not necessary to wait for the phone company to provide new dedicated lines; the employee needs only to access the system, just as they did from their old location.

As more and more companies become global, one of the challenges that have faced them is the need to maintain computer communications throughout all of their decentralized operations. Originally, this was accomplished by renting dedicated phone lines; a very expensive option.

More recently, the Internet has enabled companies to extend their in-house local area computer networks around the globe. With virtual private networks, each business location for the company can have their own local area network, which in turn connects to the home office, through the virtual private network, with relatively high security and reliability and minimum cost.

The secret to making virtual private networks function is the tunneling protocols that encapsulate the information which is sent through the Internet. This ensures security and ease of communication between the remote location and the company’s mainframe computer. The great challenge is in maintaining communications security through a medium that is intended for ease of information access; that is, the Internet.

“Tunneling” refers to the way that the information is encrypted and packaged to travel from one location to another. One of the key features of tunneling protocols is that they are designed to eliminate the possibility of that date being “entered” either to add or remove data, while in route. This ensures the high security necessary for a virtual private network to function.

The increase in availability of virtual private networks has become a boon to medium to small companies working in multiple locations. Whereas before only major corporations could afford integrating their computer systems in remote locations, now even small companies can benefit from the increased communication efficiency of allowing their remote locations access to their mainframes.

While virtual private networks are in use by many companies, this is still an emerging technology. New standards, equipment and software are constantly being developed and released into the waiting marketplace.