Software/Covid Defined Innovations
We have been challenged by Covid on how to continue and support product development in distributed environment and I would like to share a solution that we have built that no-one will ever think in wild dreams.
Covid-19 has pushed the IT innovation by 400% in just one year and I would like to extend my gratitude to IT personals who kept the systems, networks, Datacenters and cloud running during pandemic times.
Our Developers/testers, support technicians are working on devices of customers like printer, POS, pinpad, embedded devices these are connected back to customer environment via a point to point VPN to office to test, validate and confirm the use-cases of customers before rolling out to public use . With Covid-19 restrictions, employees cannot come to office, So like any other corporate we did shipped the devices to employee houses this covered 30% of test cases. Customers would like to test the remaining uses-cases by connecting them to their own network/setup to debug or fix active issues.
Problem statement: Embedded devices are not running any traditional OS’s to install a VPN client to extend the network of customer to home.
Options, we have considered to solve the problem:
- Ship a VPN device to home-office
This is not possible as VPN devices are not available in the market. Market retailers are only keeping the demand for 45 days, but we are into 60th, day and Fortinet VPN devices are not available on Market.
2. Software based VPN devices running on Laptops
This is the only option available as we have many laptops available with company.
With tight timelines to make this available around multiple countries, we have come with a design below:
a. Laptop
b. Dumb Switch
c. VMware workstation to run Fortinet VM for VPN services
d. Cat6 cables
e. Internet at employee home
We have deployed this in multiple countries and solved the problem thrown by covid. With this we achieved lab at home (LAH) to solve the complex problems of customer.