The results of a survey was made public today by SSL VPN provider Aventail. By 2008, 75 - 85 percentage of organizations will support secure remote access solutions to address increasing demand from mobile device, wireless LAN, and disaster recovery usage.

    Survey participants consisted of: senior executives in IT, networking, and/or security departments, and came from organizations that were researching SSL VPNs. Organizations were of all sizes, with over half having more than 1000 employees. Additionally, most organizations already had significant experience with secure remote access solutions, with more than 50% of them already supporting at least some remote access for teleworkers, traveling employees, home computer users, wireless LAN users, and mobile device users.

The study revealed:

- 77% of organizations support secure remote access for teleworkers today
- Secure remote access usage will increase significantly over the next 12 months, when 85% of organizations will support secure remote access from mobile devices, 82% from a wireless LAN, and 75% for disaster recovery.
- 98% of respondents rated “security” as an extremely or very important criteria in making a decision to purchase a secure remote access solution, making it the #1 criterion.
- “Ease of use” and “easy to install and manage” were also top purchasing criteria, with 89% and 84% or respondents, respectively, rating them as extremely or very important.
- “Well-known brand” was deemed not to be an important criterion, with only 44% of respondents rating it as extremely or very important.

    The #1 challenge facing IT organizations continues to be the security, with the increasing use of mobile devices a close #2. Organizations will also continue to expand secure remote access usage in the more traditional use cases of teleworkers and home computer users. Survey respondents rated “security” as the top criteria in making a purchasing decision for their new secure remote access solutions, with “easy to use” and “easy to install and manage” also extremely important.

    Sarah Daniels, VP of Marketing for Aventail Corporation, stated: "This survey confirms the need for advanced secure remote access solutions based on today’s IT manager’s use cases. “With today’s distributed workforce, now more than ever, network IT managers need to be assured that their employees have anytime, anywhere secure remote access--whether it be from a home office, on the road, a wireless LAN, or from a mobile device.”

You can find more information from http://www.aventail.com/SurveyResults.