It was a common enough problem for a small business: AMT Asset Management, a Marlboro, New Jersey-based brokerage with six employees, needed a way to connect its Boca Raton, Florida office to headquarters. The goal was to provide the smaller office . . .
It was a common enough problem for a small business: AMT Asset Management, a Marlboro, New Jersey-based brokerage with six employees, needed a way to connect its Boca Raton, Florida office to headquarters. The goal was to provide the smaller office access to the Web-based securities-pricing information that amt was already receiving at its New Jersey location. That way, amt could avoid having to subscribe to a separate outside data provider just for the Florida office--for upwards of $1,200 a month.

The obvious solution would have been a secure virtual private network--in this case, essentially a broadband pipe through a telecommunications carrier--linking the two sites. But when amt president Jeffrey Gerstel, who doubles as the company's technical support, explored this alternative, he saw that it wasn't really an option at all. Quotes that ranged as high as several thousand dollars each month scared him off. "We spoke to a few network companies, and the solutions were very expensive," says Gerstel. A vpn was simply too pricey for his tiny company.

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