Some advice please folks!

[Halfmad]

I'm trying to come up with a solution to this problem:

 

We've got about 200 users, split over 55 sites who move around between the sites a lot. Many of them are rural sites with awful 'net access, but they all have their own 2003 domain and servers. They're separate domains as the sites operate as separate companies, but these staff are shared (complicated situation).

 

Users are now gathering highly confidential data, this was saved locally but as they're now moving between sites they're wanting to be able to access this at any site, at any time.

 

In general the users have very, very poor computer skills.

 

Any suggestions how to manage this?

 

Options I was considering were:

 

1. Sharepoint - limited knowledge myself on this, not sure it'd be simple enough for users (yes some are that bad).

 

2. Syncing remote shared areas to a central server, problem with this is that if they're on another site,they'll have another domain so permissions might be an issue. Downside is access speeds to the server could be slow due to garbage internet connections.

 

3. Sod permission - give them a logon for the central server and share from there. Downside is access speeds to the server could be slow.

 

4. USB pens - problems sharing data, people lose them, boss would shoot me even if we encrypted them.

 

Any suggestions greatly welcomed!

[p858snake]

By poor net access do you mean speeds or the actual connection cutting out, because if its just speeds you could do a vpn type setup and do trusts between the servers. Which will allowed the user accounts and resources to be shared amongst them.

[Halfmad]

Net connections are generally very reliable, but they're also very slow - some are only 0.5mb, others are up to 6mb. Problems of rural sites

 

My only worry with VPN would be that the upload speeds of the sites are even worse, 256kb probably being about the highest.

 

I think regardless of the solution it'll be slow though, no getting around the infrastructure!! VPN is a good idea though! might have to give it a bit of testing.

[SpuffMonkey]

Personally I would want to centralise data storage and offer it out remotely - maybe offer a Citrix type solution from central servers - its fairly light on bandwidth and fairly secure - though without knowing what the data is and how its used - its difficult to say.

[dhicks]

We've got about 200 users, split over 55 sites who move around between the sites a lot. Many of them are rural sites with awful 'net access

 

Hand each user a netbook with built-in mobile broadband that, when switched on, loads up a kiosk-mode web browser and goes straight to a web-based application for them to input / view data. Disable the USB ports and card reader on the netbooks so there's no way for anyone to load anything else on to them, take any data off, or otherwise mess anything up. Stop the browser from being able to visit any other site except your own web-based application. Get a proper web server in a nice managed server room somewhere, mirrored to a second one somewhere for backup.

 

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David Hicks