SSL VPN At HelpAge India

HelpAge India is working for the cause and care of elderly, with the aim of empowering them to take decisions pertaining to their lives. A charitable organization with the mission to serve the old, over the years HelpAge India has changed its orientation from implementing welfare projects to those that focus on development. It is now laying stress on income-generation and micro-credit projects that enable the participation of older people in the mainstream society.

Most of the HelpAge India executives work on the field and have no direct access to office network. Most of their work and correspondence is done through e-mail for which, they access Internet from a cyber café or use handhelds and other e-mail enabled devices from any where in the country.

With e-mail being an imperative communication tool HelpAge India has deployed Aventail EX 1500 SSL VPN appliance for secure connection and to access e-mail from anywhere with high level of security and protection to its data and e-mail contents.

Need For Secured Connectivity

The offices of HelpAge India span across 33 cities in India. In some cities its offices have no computers and the employees work from cyber cafes or from other Internet access centers. This calls for a secured access environment to enable employees to access mail from anywhere.

More from Biztech

Future Group - Reliance Retail Deal approved by CCI RBI ban on cryptocurrencies takes effect; prohibition could force investors to tap the black market

Explains Baljeet Asthana, deputy director, IT, HelapAge India, “There was a strong need for a secure, transparent, easy to use SSL VPN solution which would help our employees to access mail either from managed or unmanaged devices ranging from desktops to laptops to smart phones. As we are a charity run organization we don’t have high budgets for IT deployments. Hence cost becomes an important deciding factor.”

To keep regular contacts with the field staff and other regional office executives email is an important tool at HelpAge India. The top level management always needs updates on the work going on in different parts of India. On the other hand the field staff needs to access the necessary information for the tasks assigned by the head office.

Presently IT at HelpAge India is limited to e-mail application, but they plan to extend it to some other client/server applications like Human Capital Management.

Taking Decision With HCL Comnet

HelpAge India partners with HCL Comnet for all its IT deployments. With HCL’s guidance HelpAge India also explored other vendors for the SSL VPN applications. Expresses Asthana, “The evaluation process took some time and after getting advice from our partner we went in for Aventail. HCL Comnet gave the basic training to our IT staff at HelpAge India about its manageability and granular access control.”

There are 53 mobile medical units across the country and it is essential for the employees of these units to regularly check the mails sent by HelpAge India’s headquarter in Delhi. The information exchanged by the head office with its employees through out India requires high security. Depending on the requirements and keeping the budget in mind HCL Comnet suggested a solution for HelpAge India. The solution would provide high level of security by eliminating direct network connections and providing granular access control, which were the requirements of HelpAge India.

Aventail Emerges Winner

After evaluating SSL VPN solutions of other vendors along with Aventail, HelpAge India decided to go for Aventail’s EX 1500. It provides employees and business partners with convenient clientless access to required network applications and resources from any Internet-enabled device, anywhere. The solution was deployed in June 2006. HelpAge India has also evaluated IPVPN solution but rejected it because they are highly priced solutions. Designed to handle the needs of large as well as small enterprises, the EX-1500 SSL VPN clientless appliance fitted well in the budget and requirements of the organization. The total cost of deployment was about Rs. 4 lakh. And every year helpage India has to pay an upgradation fee of Rs.75, 000.

The solution provides clientless access over any network and traverses any firewall. With no IPSec clients to install or support, and through seamless integration with an enterprise’s directory and security infrastructure, the appliance reduces administration costs.

ROI And Lower TCO

The latest release of Aventail’s SSL VPN EX-1500 is easy to use, secure and a powerful remote access solution available for enterprise-level deployments. As far as the ROI is concerned Asthana opines, “The ROI is good as it is clientless and saves our money. The total cost of deployment was also within our budget. It has also lowered our ongoing administrative costs. About 250 employees are getting the benefits of this application. It is typically suitable for our mobile workforce.”

Informs Asthana, “The most important part is that it is very cost effective. It increases productivity of our users with fast, transparent secure access to a full range of critical Web and client/server applications including e-mail and collaboration programs such as Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. As we are in the process of further deployment of other applications, this particular solution will also help us in the future.”

HelpAge India is also deploying Adrenalin Human Capital Management solution from Polaris. The in-house team has developed the reporting, MMU applications and other applications related to the Intranet.