SCSR1213 SECTION 04

NETWORK COMMUNICATIONS

TASK:
HBS GROUP REPORT

Group Members

Anis Shazana binti Mohd Asri (A14CS0159)

Loo Soo Yong (A14CS0185)

Lecturers Name
Section

Nurul Ain Nabilah binti Mohammad Hafizul (A14CS0177)

Dr Maznah binti Kamat
04

HBS report
Synopsis
According to Gartner, a leading company in the field of information technology (IT)
research and advisory, defines small and medium enterprises/businesses (SMEs/SMBs) with the
following criteria:
1. Number of employees:
a. Small businesses/enterprises - fewer than 100 employees.
b. Medium businesses/enterprises - between 100 to 999 employees.

2. Annual revenue:
a. Small businesses/enterprises - less than USD 50 million in revenue.
b. Midsize businesses/enterprises - between USD 50 million to USD 1 billion USD
in revenue.

This article examines how Malaysian small and medium IT companies (SMEs) run their
businesses via computer networking and remote access technologies such as virtual private
networks (VPN), video conferencing, cloud storage and real time document collaboration and
remote computer control. The implementation of such technologies allow company personnel to
conduct and coordinate businesses without being physically present in the work premise. The
use of such technologies has been predominantly used in large enterprises and institutions of
higher learning during the 90s, however the rapid drop in price, exponential increase in
performance and simplified ease of use of computers and networking equipment quickly
accelerated the deployment of remote access technologies in SMEs. This article looks at the
rough mechanism of such technologies, as well as how such applications contribute to lower
long-term cost and efficiency improvements. In addition to such questions, this article also
answers the effect of utilizing the mentioned networking technology to increase their business
presence locally and internationally.

Suggested questions
1. What are the technologies that are deemed suitable for SMEs?
2. In what ways SMEs can benefit from remote access and computer networking
technologies?
3. What are the costs involved when deploying remote access applications?
4. What are the challenges and limitations faced by SMEs when deploying and using remote
access and networking in the workplace?
5. What are the potential risks involved when utilizing such applications?

Analysis
What are the technologies that are deemed suitable for SMEs?
SMEs usually lack awareness to the value of technology transfer, thus technology transfer
networks are of particular deemedo SMEs with little in-house resources and experience to
explore the potential of new technologies. Two basics methods available to SMEs are technology
exchange which is the technology passed from one SMEs to another and technology exploitation
which means the transferring of technology to an SMEs from an external source.
Technology transfer networks enable SMEs to reach a common understanding regarding
new technologies quickly. The type and the size of the network is the most important aspects of
SMEs technology transfer networks. Small networks appear more efficient since
communications are easy and network dynamics are controllable. For large networks, they gain
benefit from a greater pool of resources. There are four principal types of networks. The "star"
network , a "nodal linkage" network which involves SMEs on an equal footing and is not
suitable for SMEs with different levels of experience. There are also two type of networks ("Ad
hoc" or "informal"). Both are without a formal structure which SMEs intimately know each other
concentrating communication where required. These tend to be mature networks, but are not well
suited for heterogeneous groupings, or those with little commonality between SMEs. "Regional"
networks are the most complex type consisting of multi-tiered structures linking local networks.

These are suitable for heterogeneous SMEs unlike the network without a formal structure that
has been discussed. The descriptions of these four types of network are exemplars in their purest
form. Networks adapt to changing internal and external factors and evolve from one (center
periphery) to another (multi-tiered). Although cooperation with other technology transfer
networks provides the possibility of accessing a wider contact base, it carries some competitive
risks.

In what ways SMEs can benefit from remote access and computer networking
technologies?
Using remote access and computer networking will actually improve business
productivity for the SMEs industry. Anytime, anyplace and anywhere- The network access gives
employees of a company to have a great flexibility regarding when and where they perform their
job functions. Employees who desire network access from home after hours and weekends to
perform business functions such as answering e-mail or using network applications is
accommodated by the remote access and computer networking technologies. Essentially,
employees can take their office wherever they go, thus improving response times and enabling
work without interruptions present in an office environment. Both are also bring benefits to
SMEs by providing a secure solution for limited network access to non-employees, such as
contractors or business partners.
Contractors and partner network access can be limited to the specific servers, Web pages
or files they are allowed to access to, thus extending them the network access they need to
contribute to business productivity without compromising network security.

What are the costs involved when deploying remote access applications?
As you can probably guess, the pricing is going to increase substantially as you move
from the lower-level remote access software solutions to a full-blown terminal server. For remote
access software, the pricing model will typically be a per user per month scenario. On average,
you should expect to pay around $5 per user per month.

VPN connections work a bit differently; rather than having a per user fee, you will often
find VPN clients sold by number of concurrent connections that your organization will have. In
other words, you could purchase a pack of 50 VPN clients, which means that any 50 of your staff
members can make use of the VPN connection at one time. These clients can either come as part
of your firewall (which, keep in mind, must be robust in order to support this kind of remote
access), or as a separate one-time investment down the road.
Lastly we have access by way of a terminal/Citrix server. There are two main ways that
you can take advantage of this solution:
1. Renting space from a cloud provider.
Your server(s) will reside at your providers datacenter, and you will pay a per user fee for the
access. Wrapped into your charge will be fees for data storage, technical support, patching,
monitoring, hardware upgrades, licensing, and any complex applications that require extra
computing power. All told, expect to see a per user charge of around $100 to $200.
2. Maintaining your own server in-house.
This means that you purchase the server, the software, and remote desktop service CALS for
every user at your organization. For a 30-person organization, just the server hardware will run
you close to $9,000. Then, thesoftware and licensing will be an additional one-time investment
of around $7,000. If you go the Citrix route, plan on an additional investment of around $15,000
for a 30-person organization, plus an annual support renewal at around $750.
All told, then, remote access can cost your organization anywhere from $5 to $200 per
person depending upon which route you end up taking. This is a vast disparity, but when youre
talking about remote access, youre really talking about a very wide range of technologies. It
might take some work and some money to land on the solution thats right for you, but the
efficiency and the mobility that youll gain as a result will be substantial and that makes it all
pretty well worth it.

What are the challenges and limitations faced by SMEs when deploying and using remote
access and networking in the workplace?

The new workplace provides technical challenges for SMEs since the
distribution/dispersion of the workplace also introduces the distribution of technology platforms
used by the workforce. For technologically adept enterprises, the distribution of technology
platform is a minor issue. However, for enterprises that are not as adept, the distribution of
platforms would be a significant challenge, particularly for their technical support staff.
SMEs will have to face challenges from the global employment of personnel to servicing
global customers. These enterprises with a large geographic scope will need to seriously consider
different cultures within the new workplace. Some of the cultural challenges for the new
workplace include:
Workforce cultureThe enterprise needs to account for different, underlying workforce
cultures both individually and with different types of workforce groups.
Customer cultureThe enterprise needs to account for different, underlying cultures for all the
different types of customers as well.
Time DifferencesEnterprises need to account for time zone differences if applicable to their
workforce and customer base. One advantage of the new workplace is the ability to distribute the
workforce to provide a follow-thesun model, allowing personal service across various time
zones. One challenge with a workforce distributed across various time zones in the new
workplace is the coordination required to work around the time differences.

What are the potential risks involved when utilizing such applications?
There is an upward trend that companies are pushing data to the cloud, as cloud-oriented
solutions are usually cheaper than local hosting. Despite the advantage in costs, concerns of
security and privacy begin to arise as there are cases of data breaches in cloud services. In
addition, most files in public cloud storage are often hosted abroad; the company has little
control over the files hosted.
On October 13, 2014, several notable tech sites, such as CNET and TechCrunch reported
that about 7 million accounts have their passwords compromised, due to a security breach. An
entry on Pastebin, posted on October 13, shows a list of 400 emails and matching plain text

passwords, claimed to be part of a large-scale Dropbox hack. The login details for the 400 email
addresses, each one starting with the letter B, have been labeled as a "first teaser...just to get
things going". The perpetrators are also promising to release more details if they're paid for the
information.
With mobile devices being used as a mobile office, their security is often considered as
the paramount criteria for mobile productivity. There are malicious software written for mobile
operating systems that are designed to steal data from the device, which ultimately lead to data
breaches. In response to such concerns, many manufacturers of mobile devices implement some
form of enterprise security - a prominent example would be BlackBerry's Enterprise Server and
Samsung's Knox, in which the latter is preinstalled in many Samsung devices. Enterprise
security software often provides encrypted storage and protection from mobile malware.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 smartphone, which has Samsung Knox preinstalled on
the device.

Virtual Private Networking (VPN)

A VPN is a private network that uses a public network (usually in most cases, the
Internet) to connect remote sites and networked computers together. VPNs use 'virtual'
connections routed through the Internet from the company's private Intranet to the remote site or
employee. For example a manager in the branch office in Penang is able to access his main
computer in his company headquarters which is located in Kuala Lumpur. Due to the use of
encryption in VPN connections, they are known to be secure - even if the information is
intercepted, the information is rendered unreadable to humans as encryption scrambles the
transmitted data.
While VPN sounds like a brand new technology, it was not the first technology that
allows companies to perform remote connection - during the 1990s until the early and mid
2000s, leased lines provided by telecommunications companies were used to connect computers
between multiple offices. These connections form a single wide-area network (WAN) for a
business. Despite the reliability and security of leased lines, leased lines are very expensive and the cost can be prohibitive for SMEs.
As the Internet becomes more and more accessible to the public, and Internet service
providers (ISPs) continue to develop faster and more reliable Internet connections with pricing
lower than leased lines, many companies have replaced leased lines with remote access
technologies that utilize the Internet.
The advantages of using well-designed VPNs in the workplace include extended
connections across multiple geographic regions without leased lines, improved security for the
transmission of information, savings in time as employees are not required to be physically
present at the workplace - they can work everywhere. Such benefits often lead to cost savings,
and this explains the reasons behind the rapid adoption of VPNs in the office.
Remote access VPNs, which are usually intended for individual employees to connect
their computers to company servers as if they were directly plugged into company servers,
consists of two main components: a client software installed on the end user machine, and a

network access server (NAS) installed on the company's premise. The end user signs into the
VPN with their credentials, and if the credentials are correct, a secured and tunneled connection
to the remote server will be established. Businesses may choose from setting up and maintaining
their own VPN, or they can choose to outsource the deployment to third party companies.
Site-to-site VPNs however, allows offices in multiple fixed locations with each other over a
public network such as the Internet. Site-to-site VPNs extends the company's network, making computer
resources from one location available to employees at other locations. An example of a company that
needs a site-to-site VPN is a growing corporation with dozens of branch offices around the world.

There are two types of site-to-site VPNs:

Intranet-based -- If a company has one or more remote locations that they wish to join in a single
private network, they can create an intranet VPN to connect each separate LAN to a single WAN.

Extranet-based -- When a company has a close relationship with another company (such as a
partner, supplier or customer), it can build an extranet VPN that connects those companies' LANs.
This extranet VPN allows the companies to work together in a secure, shared network
environment while preventing access to their separate intranets.
Even though the purpose of a site-to-site VPN is different from that of a remote-access VPN, it

could use some of the same software and equipment. Ideally, though, a site-to-site VPN should eliminate
the need for each computer to run VPN client software as if it were on a remote-access VPN.

Exhibit 1: Examples of a remote access VPN

Source: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/vpn3.htm

Exhibit 2: Examples of a site-to-site VPN

Source: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/vpn4.htm

Cloud Storage and Real Time Document Collaboration

The widespread use of high speed Internet in SMEs also allowed the deployment of cloud
storage and real time document collaboration. Cloud-oriented services such as Microsoft's
Office 365 and Google's Google Apps for Work enables companies to utilize productivity
applications such as word processing and presentations without the installation of additional
software. Real time document collaboration is often widely advertised as the 'killer' feature of a
web-based productivity software, as multiple users can work on the same document in real time
without sending multiple copies of the document and creating duplicates, which may lengthen
the workflow and result in lost productivity.
Apart from providing a productivity suite, such services also offer a centralized web
storage where users may upload files into the virtual storage space managed by a third party
company, and the file can be retrieved on a variety of devices, from desktops to smartphones. As
a result, the total cost of ownership is greatly reduced, when compared to traditional setups such
as a volume licensed productivity suite and a locally managed file server.
Competitive pricing and features quickly lured companies to switch from a traditional file
server and productivity suite to a cloud-based suite of applications. Despite numerous concerns
of privacy and ownership of files once the files have been pushed to the cloud, their convenience
and ease of implementation far outweighed their cons and many companies are implementing
them as an integral part of their businesses. The rollout of cloud-based services is projected to
grow even faster than before, thanks to the rapid development of mobile devices such as
smartphones and tablets, and the introduction of Bring Your Own Device BYOD) policy in the
workplace.

Exhibit 3: A simple diagram of the architecture of a cloud storage system

Source: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cloud-computing/cloud-storage.htm

Comparison of traditional productivity suite against cloud-based productivity applications

Criteria

Traditional productivity

Cloud-based productivity

suite

services
Subscription based -

Pricing model
Charged on a per purchase
basis - each purchase will
Productivity software

charged on a per month and a

per user basis

grant a number of licenses

Requires volume licensing,

No volume licensing is

which can be expensive

required - productivity
software is bundled in the

Cloud storage

Requires the manual setup of

subscription
Cloud storage is available as

Ownership

HTTP/FTP servers, which

a standard feature - no

requires regular maintenance

additional setup is required to

and technical know-how to

use this feature

setup
Companies can keep the

No guaranteed ownership -

product indefinitely after the

cloud providers may

purchase of the product

terminate the service, which

may lead to the loss of the

Security and privacy

All applications and files are

product
Applications and files are

locally hosted, which reduces

hosted on the public Internet,

the chances of data breaches

which can lead to data

breaches