In the face of escalating cyber threats, organizations are seeking the shortest path to ensure mission-critical continuity. However, 78% of security leaders lack confidence in their organization’s cybersecurity posture. This lack of confidence is further exacerbated by the fact that 60% of enterprise devices report unhealthy applications at any given time. Furthermore, 80% of organizations report connection interruptions or connectivity delays, which can significantly impact business operations and productivity.

US Foods, one of the largest food distributors in the United States, was facing a significant challenge with its field team of 5,000. These employees, who meet with and serve customers in person, were struggling with unreliable connections when trying to submit purchase orders on their laptops at customer sites. This often resulted in lost work and wasted time as they had to log back into the VPN connection and restart the application. The poor connectivity also negatively impacted inventory management, as reps wouldn't know until the end of the day if a product was out of stock. This led to a loss of 1.1 million hours of potential sales time with clients and an annual cost of $800,000 on pre-printed materials.

4-County Cooperative includes a main office and five district offices spread out across 9 counties in Mississippi. Field teams rely on Internet connections to access the utility’s core work order system that creates efficient work scheduling around events such as storm repair. Workers are armed with Windows 7 laptops and Windows software. Relying on a cellular connection to access work applications, the laptops would often be unable to connect due to poor network coverage, bringing work order progress to a halt. Some linemen grew so frustrated that they abandoned their crippled laptops, resorting to pen and paper until they had time to open an IT ticket. Faced with unhappy employees and a system that often could not serve its intended purpose, Critcher and his team realized they needed a more reliable approach to keeping teams connected to the Internet while in the field.

The UK’s largest recovery breakdown service, AA, handles over 10,000 calls for roadside assistance daily. They wanted to improve their operations model by delivering all necessary information for roadside response and customer service into a single interface, accessed via iPhones. The challenge was to ensure secure, reliable connections for the iPhones no matter the coverage conditions. This was particularly important in peak seasons and rural areas where maintaining a data connection can be difficult. The company also wanted to improve worker safety alongside busy highways.

Bloodworks Northwest, a not-for-profit organization, provides transfusion medicine services to over 90 hospitals across Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. The organization operates 14 mobile blood drive units that collect blood components from donors in the greater Seattle area. Employees of Bloodworks rely on secure and reliable mobile connectivity to verify the eligibility of potential blood donors. However, they faced challenges with their existing connectivity solutions from NetMotion Mobility and Citrix. The organization decided to evaluate the performance of both solutions and standardize on one across the organization.

Fraport, the company that manages Frankfurt Airport, one of the world's busiest transportation hubs, was facing a significant challenge. The airport's workers were unable to move seamlessly between networks, which was causing difficulties in their jobs and affecting the turnaround time of aircraft. The airport, known for its efficiency, had a strict 45-minute aircraft turnaround policy. However, mobile application and data access issues were hindering this initiative. With hundreds of workers switching between WiFi and cellular networks, connections were often unstable. This issue became particularly concerning when workers were observed trying to fix their connections while driving, putting themselves at risk.

Allina Hospitals and Clinics were among the first in the nation to use Electronic Medical Records to deliver seamless, coordinated care. However, the group’s home nurses were regularly losing connectivity in the field. Logged out of applications without warning, the nurses were forced to log in again and re-enter the data lost from their previous session. When the IT group tied 90 helpdesk tickets to this issue, management stepped in to find a better solution. The EMR application requires field devices to sync with the central database. But as the scale of data transfer grew, nurses could no longer wait until the end of their shifts to sync from an office or at home – synchronization sessions were taking as long as a half-hour. The problem was so bad that several nurses quit in frustration.

AT&T, a global telecommunications giant, was facing a significant challenge with its field engineers. The company's traditional Virtual Private Network (VPN) was frequently dropping connections, causing engineers to repeatedly log in multiple times a day. This issue was leading to a surge in helpdesk calls and overtime requirements. The inability to maintain a stable connection to the corporate network was hindering the productivity of the field engineers and delaying the completion of work orders. The company needed a solution that would ensure continuous and reliable network connectivity for its field personnel.

The Dutch Pilots’ Corporation (Nederlands Loodswezen) trains and furnishes skilled harbor pilots for guiding ships through busy waters, rivers and locks. Crews pilot and dock 100,000 ships every year in Dutch and Flemish harbors, working 24 hours a day regardless of weather conditions. The law requires that the ships carry an autonomous navigation system. However, since the satellite-based system could leave crews vulnerable to natural signal distortions, jamming and spoofing, Loodswezen selected NetMotion Mobility® to ensure a stable connection to land-based servers delivering mission-critical local position corrections. Mobility enhanced crew safety and scheduling efficiency while helping the organization meet governmentmandated precision requirements.

Cox Communications, a major cable provider in the U.S., was facing challenges with its field service communications. The company's 3,500 field-service technicians handle over six million work orders annually. However, these technicians were having difficulty connecting remotely to their work order management system, leading to delays in service. The company noticed that a significant amount of time was being spent on establishing a connection relative to work orders. Field staff were also frequently contacting the back office to gather customer information when a connection could not be made.

Heinen & Hopman, a maritime-industry specialist, was facing a challenge with their fitters who were struggling with connection problems at the work sites. The fitters use mobile phones, laptops, and tablets every day to do their jobs. They need a stable, reliable, and secure internet connection to be able to use applications, such as 3D visualisations of the ships that they are working on. Since the fitters mainly do their work in shipyards and other remote sites, they often had to deal with poor internet connections and regularly experienced connection drops. Reestablishing a connection is easy for an IT consultant to do, but it is a time-consuming chore for a project manager or fitter. Having to repeatedly re-establish VPN connections meant that they lost a lot of time and meanwhile, they couldn’t access the up-to-date, essential information they needed. For a time, workers tried carrying static versions of the drawings on their laptops for use on-site, but without a reliable connection and synchronisation the drawings were obsolete.

Hertz operates more than 1,600 “off-airport” locations in urban centers and neighborhoods. These “Local Edition” sites lease cars, trucks and vans, often to nearby residents who are having their vehicles serviced or repaired. Agents use portable POS devices to help get customers quickly into their leased vehicles. However, these POS systems would regularly stall during transactions, causing long delays that frustrated customers. The tablets run Windows XP and use a variety of network connections: wired connections through the dock, Wi-Fi and AT&T cellular data service. When switching between networks, devices would often lose connectivity, requiring agents to re-start applications and the devices to attempt to get online again. But these extra steps frustrated staff and customers alike.

The Oregon State Police (OSP) provides critical public safety services across the state of Oregon. Officers and other field employees work from their vehicles, relying on public cellular networks to access central information systems and databases while on the road. However, weak and intermittent connectivity threatened the organization’s commitment to “be there” for the citizens of Oregon. In Eastern Oregon and other rural areas of the state, cellular coverage is often spotty or weak. For officers, a lost connection is a serious problem that puts their own safety at risk and negatively impacts call response times. Operating far beyond the reach of the IT support staff, officers would have to stop what they’re doing to try and reestablish a broken connection on their own. OSP wanted to find a way to keep officers connected. Ensuring that employees – regardless of their physical location or route – are connected to mission-critical systems was going to require a level of visibility OSP had never had before.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System was facing challenges with its existing wireless network due to its rapid growth. The increasing number of help tickets for persistent issues confirmed that the growth was overwhelming the organization’s existing wireless network. Clinicians were regularly losing connectivity while moving throughout and between facilities, which was negatively impacting patient care. The situation frustrated busy doctors and nurses who felt that they were wasting time on devices that were supposed to be increasing their productivity. The IT team also had concerns about wireless security, especially in light of HIPAA compliance requirements.

The Sheriff’s Office in Coweta County, Georgia, was struggling with a mobile VPN that triggered connectivity issues and cut off front-line personnel from receiving vital alerts. This left them extremely vulnerable. The VPN’s “traffic light” indicator in the system tray was supposed to show green when connected, yellow for connectivity issues, and red for not connected at all. However, the VPN was freezing, also leaving the status indicator frozen in the connected state. This was a major problem as it could potentially put the deputies in danger if they were not receiving alerts about dangerous situations.