Having a clear enterprise mobility strategy to support today’s highly mobile workforce is vital for organizations of all sizes and across all verticals. Secure remote access is essential for IT administrators managing their field-based devices and is crucial to ensuring remote worker productivity. It also allows organizations to access a global talent pool, providing an important competitive advantage. As a subject matter expert in this field, I’ve deployed numerous remote access solutions for customers around the world using a wide variety of technologies from Microsoft and others.

For many years, traditional client-based VPN solutions from Cisco and Checkpoint were common. Later, Microsoft DirectAccess became a popular solution for enterprise deployments. Today, Windows 10 Always On VPN is gaining momentum as a mobility solution, but some customers require security, performance, visibility, and manageability features that aren’t available in the Microsoft ecosystem.

DirectAccess and Always On VPN

Before the introduction of DirectAccess and Always On VPN, VPNs were predominantly user-initiated and provided a poor user experience. DirectAccess reimagined the mobile user experience by providing seamless, transparent, and always-on remote connectivity without requiring user interaction. This model solved adoption and supportability issues for remote access initiatives, however, DirectAccess is limited to Windows Enterprise edition clients that are joined to a domain. Always On VPN is limited to Windows 10, but does not explicitly required domain-joined clients. So, there’s a strategic gap for organizations that need a DirectAccess-like experience but must support mobile platforms that include non-Windows operating systems.

Free Isn’t Always Free

One reason that the Microsoft mobility solutions are popular is because they are “free”. The price for the remote access platform is included in the cost of the Microsoft Windows server and client operating system licenses; DirectAccess and Always On VPN avoid additional per-user or per-device licenses. Of course, they aren’t free as any solution has associated costs, like deployment and support.

Getting What You Pay For

Limited feature sets are common with cost-free offerings. For example, DirectAccess lacks granular policy enforcement and suffers from poor performance. Always On VPN adds many new capabilities like infrastructure independence, support for non-domain joined machines, and conditional access, but it is limited to Windows 10 and many advanced features require integration with Azure, which does increase cost. In addition, both DirectAccess and Always On VPN lack essential features commonly required by enterprise organizations.

Purpose-Built Enterprise VPN

NetMotion Mobility provides the same seamless, transparent, always-on remote access that DirectAccess and Always On VPN provide, but with far more features and capabilities. What sets NetMotion Mobility apart is that it is purpose-built technology designed from the ground up for mobility. Most VPN protocols in use today are either LAN-based protocols (IPsec) or web-based protocols (HTTPS) that have been adapted for remote access use. As such they often suffer from poor performance due in part to the limitations imposed by their underlying transport protocols. In addition, these protocols assume reliable connectivity and often underperform on wireless and cellular networks commonly used by mobile workers. NetMotion Mobility solves these problems.

Advanced Features

NetMotion Mobility is a premium remote access solution that is stable, mature, and offers a rich feature set to provide an exceptional experience for both users and administrators.

Enhanced Security

NetMotion Mobility includes fine-grained policy enforcement to restrict network access based on a wide range of parameters including IP address, protocol, port, application, time of day, location, and type of network (e.g. wired, Wi-Fi, wireless, etc.). NetMotion Mobility also includes integrated Network Access Control (NAC) to validate device configuration prior to connecting, ensuring the highest level of security for remote endpoints. Conditional access can be configured without requiring additional third-party software, services, or cloud integration. More details here and here.

Improved Performance

NetMotion Mobility client to server communication is optimized to improve reliability and performance. Network traffic is compressed and prioritized to ensure optimum performance for critical applications. Session persistence allows mobile workers to remain connected during times of poor connectivity or when roaming between different networks. More details here.

Greater Visibility

NetMotion Mobility provides a wealth of detailed information to perform analysis and troubleshooting for remote connections. Performance and diagnostic information are logged in real-time and provide administrators with crucial data and insight to quickly identify and resolve connectivity issues. More details here.

Better Supportability

NetMotion Mobility is supported by dedicated, highly trained support engineers with deep product experience. NetMotion support is not tiered. The support engineer who answers the phone will handle the case until resolution.

Broad Client Support

NetMotion Mobility provides seamless, transparent, always-on remote access for all versions and SKUs of Windows as well as Mac, iOS (iPhone and iPad), and Android devices. It is a truly comprehensive remote access solution designed to meet the complex and diverse needs of organizations large and small.

Software Based

NetMotion Mobility is a software-based solution that can be deployed on any supported version of Windows Server. It can be deployed on physical or virtual hardware, and it can be deployed on-premises or in any private or public cloud including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This flexibility provides quick, cost-effective scalability and redundancy using existing virtual infrastructure, avoiding further investment in proprietary firewall or VPN platforms.

Click here to learn more about NetMotion Mobility’s advanced feature set.

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