Ekinops SD-WAN Appliance Addresses WFH

Optical transport vendor Ekinops is taking on remote work-related performance challenges with its SD-WAN Home Office Connect platform. Optical transport vendor Ekinops is taking on remote work-related performance challenges with its SD-WAN Home Office Connect platform. The new offering is built around the company’s SD-WAN Xpress platform and provides customers with a small, lightweight router that can be distributed to remote workers. The appliance effectively turns the employee’s home into a branch office, creating a secure VPN tunnel to the nearest corporate office or data center. The appliance features support for broadband, LTE, and WiFi connectivity to ensure a robust connection regardless of any hardware or infrastructure constraints. The router is a fully functional SD-WAN appliance capable of isolating business traffic from personal browsing, and applying corporate security policy, all without compromising employee privacy. “This enables enterprises to consider a more permanent move to a remote working model, and benefit from the cost savings of not managing a physical office space,” the company claims. And Ekinops has good reason to believe remote work will become the norm for a significant number of enterprises, even after the pandemic. The company cites a Gartner survey of 229 human resources leaders from April, which revealed that nearly 50% of organizations had sent at least 80% of their employees home. Of those employees, Global Workplace Analytics now predicts between 25% and 30% will continue to work from home on a permanent basis. “In recent months, companies across the globe have faced the sudden challenge of remotely connecting their employees quickly and securely,” said Marc Bouteyre, head of virtualization at Ekinops, in a statement. “But since flexible working has been a rising trend for well over a decade now, service providers and enterprises alike need a robust, cost-effective and simple solution to support remote connectivity long term.” However, remote workers face challenges with inconsistent broadband access, networking equipment, and an expanded security perimeter. “Many remote workers have experienced performance challenges due to their low-grade WiFi at home and the continuous mix of personal and business traffic,” Bouteyre added. “Equally, many enterprises have been feeling the increased business security risks, left at the mercy of their employees’ network security at home.”