Audience3
From MissionTechWiki
Contents |
Orverview of Audience
The third audience is for remote workers. These are mission staff that work at the mission home office or satellite offices, who need access to the data within the organziation. As a mission grows, their fundraising expands and their staff spreads out. Many of them want to remain connected to the mission home office infrastructure.
Other Technical Growth at this time
Infrastructure
The usual way to give remote workers access is through a vpn or remote desktop sharing. Both of these tend to change the network a fair bit. A VPN usually forces a "DMZ" (Demilitarized Zone). Remote Desktop Sharing usually adds another server. Either way, missions usually shore up their Internet connection, moving from a DSL to a T1 or other dedicated connection.
At this time, many missions also put in wireless and a guest network. Wireless so that staff can move around, and a guest network so that wireless guests do not share the same network as the office does. The infrastructure usually moves to managed switches and VLANs, with 802.1x security or chilispot to enforce guest security.
Data
At this time, most people have moved to a client/server model for their database. They can usually merge some of their databases so that the receipting and contact management works off the same address pool. Some organizations outsource their databases to ASPs (Application Service Prividers) so that all their data is available from the outside.
Now it is important for the mission that they have webmail, POP, or IMAP email available to them. This allows people to access their internal email from home.
What causes a mission to move to the next audience
The next audience, Missionaries is an immediate desire. Once the mission has satisfied the needs of their remote workers, most of the same technology can be applied to give missionaries better access to information about themselves and their projects.
Some tools to meet this audience
Databases
- Blackboard
- Raisers Edge
- Petra - Operation Mobilization has a database that they have developed which is available to mission organizations. They are working on making it free to missions and developing an infrastructure so that it is supported.
- Denarisoft
VPN Tools
- PPTP (Also known as Microsoft VPN) -This comes built into all the windows operating systems since windows 95. The Microsoft servers have the service so you can just turn it on and punch a few holes into the firewall. Many linux based firewalls can handle this too. It is relatively easy to use, but there are a number of issues with it.
- IPSec - This is a newer generation of VPN that is very secure, but much harder to configure. It comes with Windows 2000, and XP Pro.
- Hamachi - This works very well for small organizations (mobile organizations) that need VPN Technology long before the rest of their infrastructure is in place to handle a VPN. Hamachi does not work well once you have more than 16 people connected at once.
- OpenVPN
- SSLExplorer