The following hypothetical scenario illustrates how Connection Point Services can be used to help support a corporation’s need to offer a cost-effective means of telecommuting.
Five Lakes Publishing is a multinational company that spends a significant amount of money on 800 numbers and long-distance dial-up fees so that its employees can telecommute. The 800 numbers are used by home-office employees who live outside the calling area and by employees on business trips. Home-office employees living inside the calling area use a local access number.
The company decides to use Connection Point Services to merge select access numbers in its existing phone book with the phone book of an ISP, because their administrators understand that using the ISP’s local phone numbers save money on long distance charges while maintaining a high level of security. Five Lakes Publishing uses Microsoft Connection Manager to automatically differentiate between its local access numbers and the ISP’s Points of Presence outside the local calling area. As a result, the difference between local access to the corporate private network and the extended remote access over the Internet using a secure connection is transparent to the employee. Connection Manager connects to the corporate private network when a local remote access number is used and establishes a secure connection to the corporate private network when an ISP phone number is used.
Based on the agreement made with the ISP, Five Lakes Publishing can use the Connection Manager Administration Kit to build a branded version of Connection Manager that includes customized Help files and its own support numbers. Five Lakes Publishing can even use Phone Book Administrator to publish updated phone books to the Connection Point server.
For more information on Connection Manager and the Administration Kit, see the Connection Manager Administration Kit documentation.