Download Description
The Yankee Group's 1999 Corporate Mobile Survey demonstrated that security was the primary concern in adoption of wireless data. Wireless virtual private networks (WVPNs) offer a secure means of penetrating corporate firewalls for remote access. WVPNs take advantage of two major business trends: the growth of e-business and the prevalence of VPN technology over wireline today. The Yankee Group estimates that approximately 4,000 U.S. corporations utilized carrier Internet VPN (IVPN) services by year-end 1999, growing to 27,000 by 2003. Wireless represents another access option for connecting mobile users to the corporate intranet. WVPNs combine mobility and VPN technology by adding wireless optimization to the security of a VPN. While the deployment of WVPN today is negligible, we believe that almost 40% of companies with wireline VPN could incorporate wireless connectivity for remote access by 2003. Typically in the corporate environment, wireless data has been positioned as an isolated technology, independent of existing networked systems and involving a new set of vendors and equipment requirements. The VPN approach enables wireless vendors to talk to IT managers in their own language and in the context of installed infrastructure. It leverages an existing VPN/remote access scheme and extends it over wireless. WVPNs can extend the reach of wireless data beyond vertical applications into a broader horizontal market that encompasses any mainstream business (sales, insurance, finance, health care) that must provide mobile access to standard enterprise-wide applications. Just as enterprises were able to leverage the value proposition of a VPN for voice communications when remote users could link in to voice mail and forward messages, data VPNs can be justified on the basis of database access, messaging, and providing least-cost routing across wireless and wireline transports. When mobile users can securely link into corporate systems and share information, a wireless data VPN can become a real-world implementation. Until now, VPN technology could not be applied to the wireless environment due to the bandwidth limitations of wireless networks and processing constraints of handheld devices. Driven by increasingly mobile workforces and the usage of laptops and handheld devices, traditional VPN software and hardware vendors, cellular network operators, and value-added service providers are joining forces to extend VPN to wireless. This Report reviews these activities and addresses related issues including: Importance of VPNs for wireless remote access; Unique requirements for wireless connections and the degree to which current VPN technologies serve these requirements; Interoperability of VPNs with Wireless Application Protocol (WAP); Benefits in the wireless environment of end-to-end VPNs versus carrier-to-customer VPNs; and VPN enhancements to 2.5G and 3G networks. (Note: All monetary figures in this Report are in U.S. dollars.)