How my team didn't slip up in the snow

No business should slow down simply because workers aren't in the office. IT director Steve Clarke shares his team's remote working scheme.

A surprisingly large number of companies are still counting the cost of the UK's worst snow in 18 years. Latest estimates say the early February storm will have cost companies up to £1bn.

In today's technological world such an event should never bring a business to a halt. The ability to work from anywhere should be a standard capability and yet, as can be seen by the cost of the recent snow, the number of businesses that have invested in such technology seems to remain surprisingly low.

Whereas this kind of extreme weather event occurs only rarely, many CTOs and CIOs will now have the attention of their CEO and will be putting together plans for a remote working scheme.

I'm proud to say I survived the recent white-out with a fully functional team - and am here to tell you what my company has in place to enable remote working.

My team, which manages and develops my company's technical infrastructure, consists of about 50 people. Because they are mostly techies (though service delivery and project management are also an important part of the department), their requirements far outstrip those of the general user-base - including secure administrative access to production servers and applications, core switches and the like.

Users in the finance department can also have some weird and wonderful requirements, particularly if they have macro-filled spreadsheets. So be sure to talk with them before forming your remote working plan.

All my infrastructure technicians have a company laptop and we make it clear that these are to be taken home every night rather than left in the office. They are no good sitting in an office drawer when disaster strikes.

We use a VPN to secure connectivity - this eliminates the need to expose internal systems to the whole wide world. To secure the VPN, we use multiple level authentication utilising Active Directory login details and a SecurID token. We further beef up security by ensuring that everyone has a personal PIN for their VPN connection.

It's no good being able to administer systems remotely if a human being is still needed to be on hand to power cycle the box itself. Thus we've implemented a 'lights out' capability on all systems, enabling remote power cycling, and the datacentre operates with little if any local intervention.

The same goes for our core network infrastructure, which has full remote management even if the network itself is down. This is achieved through an out-of-band capability for all core network locations and provides access to core switches without needing the network to be functional.

The VPN remote access server (RAS) needs to be controlled as it can get expensive - the cost depends mostly on how many concurrent licences are needed. However, far more accounts can be provisioned than the concurrent limit. I run on a ratio of about three accounts to one RAS concurrent licence and it seems to work well.

In the recent transport crisis, we maxed out with about six licences to spare. This is because the vast majority of my company's non-technical people can have all the functionality they need without resorting to RAS.

The mainstay is web access to email and for the mobile warriors in the workforce we've enabled both BlackBerry and Windows mobile devices to access corporate email. Our SharePoint document repository ensures files can be accessed remotely and we've long had a culture of instant messenger use that has been a real boon of late when individuals need to communicate on the fly.

We have instantly available teleconferencing facilities, and videoconferences can be set up simply by using webcams and Skype. For more involved meetings that need whiteboards or document sharing, we use one of the online web conferencing tools that provide instant functionality at no cost if you take advantage of the free trials.

All of this adds up to complete 'business as usual' functionality for all employees.

This isn't rocket science, yet for many it seems to be. It didn't take a lot to achieve, it wasn't even very expensive. It just required a bit of forethought and a discrete implementation project.

The RAS is the most expensive bit but to enable a business to continue to function in the sort of conditions we recently experienced, it really is worth it.

Throughout the transport disruption caused by the snow, my company experienced little if any impact on technology and the business continued to function as normal. In fact many staff were probably more productive than normal because they didn't have to undertake the daily grind of getting in to the office.

This isn't the end of the road for our remote working plan though. The cloud and software as a service offerings can further loosen the ties to the office and therefore naturally reduce the impact on a business should the office not be available.

For a more radical approach, we've thought about utilising one of the virtual online worlds to set up an office where staff could gather - one which closely mirrors the traditional office but with the working flexibility now desired by many.

This forced interruption in public transport should be an object lesson in flexible working, improving productivity and generally hauling the working environment in to the 21st century.

Steve Clarke is the systems and operations director for AOL Broadband.

How did your company cope in the snow? Share your experiences by posting a reader comment below.