Remote Working Case Study
Customer Profile
A customer, who are a digital marketing agency, has their HQ offices based in Manchester city centre with around 70 staff including a telesales team, technical staff, Admin, and HR plus senior management.
Business Issue
The business had been considering providing more flexible working for staff by allowing remote and home working for certain departments.
Recent events had made this a priority for the business, as potential access and travel restrictions meant that access for staff to their office could become difficult and would potentially jeopardise their business continuity across all functions.
The scope of the remote working solution was to provide secure remote access to all critical and line of business applications across all departments. This would provide part of their ongoing business continuity planning as well as provide flexible working options to staff as necessary.
IT Solution
Greystone first reviewed the critical line of business applications to understand how best to provide these remotely to staff in a secure and well-performing solution.
Once the application scope was understood various technologies were implemented to provide the remote access. These consisted of Microsoft Remote Desktop Services with a Web Portal that allowed staff to securely log in from any Windows or Mac device and launch a ‘RemoteApp’ version of their applications.
Some staff required a ‘full desktop experience’ with multiple monitors, providing multiple business applications as well as network file share access. This was provided through an SSL VPN from the user’s laptop to Virtual Desktop machines hosted on the customer’s VMware platform.
Access to corporate email via Microsoft Office 365 was made accessible via the Office 365 web portal and secured by using ‘Conditional Access’ policies and Multi-factor Authentication.
Technology Used
- Microsoft Remote Desktop Services – RemoteApp, RD Web Access, RD Gateway
- FortiGate SSL VPN with FortiToken MFA
- VMware Virtual Desktop
- Office 365 – Conditional Access, MFA
Results and Benefits
The customer now has a ready-to-go secure remote working solution they can put into operation very quickly as and when they need to. They can also use this to provide flexible home-working for staff should they choose.
Given the urgency of this project, Greystone were able to scope, design and implement this all in under 1 week.