IT for Charities & NFPs

Remote Access – Accessing Emails and Files from Anywhere August 8, 2008

Have you ever taken work home on a disk or CD and discovered that your documents didn’t survive the transition from the hard drive? Ever been away from the office and wished you could get at your computer for just a second to access client details or other important information?

Being able to work from home in comfortable surroundings or having the ability to access your work computer files while away from the office used to be an expensive luxury not within easy reach of your typical small organisation. However, many organisations, large and small, now can have some form or another of remote access to their network without having to break the bank.

Simply put, remote access is a service that provides access to information and applications on your network from locations other than your normal place of work.

Many technologies are on the market to enable this kind of access, including:

• Software – either included with operating system or purchased separately
• Web-based applications
• Blackberries
• Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)

Over the next few blogs we shall be looking at the pros and cons of various types of remote access available and which ones are potentially the most beneficial to organisations without huge IT resources or budgets.