Enterprises are constantly looking for ways to expand their business by creating more and smaller branch offices (microbranches) so that they can be in front of their customers in a convenient and easily accessible manner. At the same time, these microbranches need highly secure IT so that cyberattacks can be prevented via these microbranches. The problem for enterprises is spending lots of money and complex IT solutions for these microbranches which eliminates the ROI completely.
Microbranches can be defined as offices with a very small number of employees, say less than 10-15 employees. A branded mercantile showroom a retail store a rural bank/insurance office or a local healthcare center are examples of microbranches. Users in these microbranches will be operating a desktop with a single or few applications or many times, a simple point-of-sale machine or tablet.
To secure these micro branches, enterprises are deploying a firewall and SD-WAN (branch-to-HQ) branch appliance on top of their ISP WAN link. Installation and deployment, configuration, and ongoing maintenance of these firewalls and SD-WAN branch appliances is a significant operational cost and overhead for the enterprise IT team.
A firewall and SD-WAN branch appliance for a microbranch use case is over-investment while the security is not increased very significantly. Users in the microbranch can’t manage the firewall or SD-WAN branch appliances. If something goes wrong, there is downtime of a day or two because the central IT team has to be involved.
Cloudbrink: software-only high-performance Zero-Trust Access
Cloudbrink hybrid-access-as-a-service (HAaaS) is a 100% software-only solution that can provide secure high-performance connectivity directly from the endpoint (desktop or a tablet or a point-of-sale machine) to the central HQ datacentre or cloud-based service.
Enterprises can eliminate deploying a firewall and SD-WAN branch appliance completely. By simply installing the Cloudbrink software on the endpoints, they can provide a highly secure connection from these endpoints to their central application servers. There is no need for any additional IT infra for securing the microbranches.
Always Available, Zero Management
Cloudbrink is a cloud-delivered service and hence, there is nothing that enterprises have to deploy/install or manage. Cloudbrink can be configured directly from the management portal available via any web browser. Users at the microbranch offices can use the Cloudbrink app to simply log in using their corporate credentials, and they are connected securely to their sales applications customer management tools, or any other central application services.
Since Cloudbrink is a cloud service with the highest levels of SLAs, there is no downtime for microbranches at all. As part of the Cloudbrink platform, there are multiple redundant paths established already and hence, microbranch never goes out of connection with the central HQ datacentre or AWS cloud services. This eliminates a significant amount of overhead for IT teams while also ensuring business is always available.
Conclusion
Microbranches are supposed to be lightweight, provide convenience to the customers, and be very efficient in delivering services and improving customer satisfaction. By over-investing in microbranches in the form of firewalls and SD-WAN branch solutions, enterprises risk all the benefits of a microbranch.
Enterprises are recommended to evaluate a cloud-native service such as Cloudbrink which truly transforms the microbranch experience for the enterprises.
