A better way of dealing with your email, away from the office

July / August 2007

This First Line technical bulletin is for people who:

• Use Microsoft Outlook for their email
• Work away from the office and connect to their business email system through Outlook Web Access or across a VPN
• Have Microsoft Outlook 2003 (or above) and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003

There are a number of reasons why people find it unsatisfactory to use Outlook Web Access or to connect to their office over a VPN. Here are some of those reasons:

Outlook Web Access

Outlook Web Access (‘webmail’) is in many ways a good solution as it means you can get to your email, contacts, calendars and tasks by just connecting to the web. However:

• It doesn’t allow you to work offline
• It doesn’t look the same or behave in the same way, and
• It's dependent on the performance of your chosen browser

Connecting to the office over a VPN

Some people find that VPNs can be unreliable and complicated to setup. However if VPN is your preferred option you might be interested to see our recent bulletin on SSL VPN a new and much simpler way of working remotely.

So what’s the alternative?

Well it’s another mouthful of an acronym: ‘RPC over HTTP’ is a utility that means you can use your Microsoft Outlook without setting up a VPN and without having to use Outlook Web Access.

It works by opening up a secure connection from your computer to your Exchange server, so there's no need for a VPN. And importantly, it uses SSL which is the security protocol commonly used in eCommerce transactions. So, it really is secure.

To find out more about this better way of dealing with email when you're away from the office, contact us