Continental Tightens AccessContinental Tightens Access

The days of trying to access the company intranet from a spotty dial-up connection in a hotel room are becoming a thing of the past. More companies are tapping into the growing number of cost-efficient, secure services that provide mobile employees with online access via a variety of channels, including Wi-Fi, wireless broadband, and cellular.

For Continental Airlines Inc., switching to a remote-access service from Fiberlink Communications Corp. with built-in security has resulted in substantial cost savings, according to the airline. When signing on from their laptops, Continental managers and salespeople used to grapple with four remote-access options from different vendors using different interfaces, and often they were frustrated by sluggish dial-up connections, says Stacey Thomas, the airline's senior manager of communications technology. Managing costs was also difficult for the IT staff. "At the end of the month, we would get a big bill and would have no way to tell who was using what," Thomas says.

Fiberlink's Extend360 lets the airline provide mobile employees with one interface for signing on through Wi-Fi, dial-up, broadband, or cellular. The software comes with firewalls and antivirus, patch-management, and anti-spyware software developed by vendor partners, and it also integrates with Continental's Cisco Systems' VPN client. Before a user launches the VPN client and connects to the network, Extend360 goes through a checklist of security settings to make sure they're all turned on. If a user isn't in compliance with the requirements, he or she doesn't get access to the network, Thomas says. For example, Norton Antivirus has to be running for the user to connect to the network and it has to have been updated within the last 30 days.

Fiberlink last week unveiled an upgrade to Extend360 that includes wireless technology known as Code Division Multiple Access EV-DO, short for Evolution-Data Optimized, that offers data-download rates of up to 2.4 Mbps. EV-DO is commercially available in 30 major U.S. markets and is expanding nationwide.

Also last week, Fiberlink and Webroot Software Inc., a provider of anti-spyware software, unveiled plans to integrate Webroot's Spy Sweeper into Fiberlink's Extend360. This will help protect users from spyware when they connect to the network from hotel rooms, airports, and other public networks that are beyond the reach of corporate IT-security systems.

Continental deployed Fiberlink's Extend360 to provide access for more than 1,500 employees in 150 cities. Remote access is necessary for traveling employees to send and receive E-mail, tap into Continental's intranet and customer database, and access seat-inventory and flight operations.

With Fiberlink, Continental also can monitor usage and set timers in each client to make sure they're not still connected if they're not being used, which helps eliminate wasteful access charges. "In the airline industry today, it's all about cost reduction," Thomas says. Continental has been able to reduce its remote-access costs from more than $200,000 to less than $50,000 a month using Fiberlink.

In the next week, Continental plans to add cellular access to its Fiberlink clients and has shipped 100 cellular cards that will fit into staff laptops. In addition, Continental says it plans to adopt the new EV-DO upgrade.

Hosted remote-access services can be a good option for businesses with a large mobile workforce, Gartner analyst Eric Paulak says. Similar services are available from AT&T, GoRemote Internet Communications, iPass, MCI, and Netifice Communications. Says Paulak, "A company that wants to ensure cost control, security management, and needs access on top of that should seriously consider checking out these services."