Several managers say the scarcity of qualified programmers, support technicians and network administrators has been pushing all forms of telecommuting up the priority lists. And it's one that will occupy Nypro for the greater part of a year. Purdue Pharma's Kronick says he agrees that VPNs will be a hot topic. With a secure VPN, for example, our employees in China don't have to know much to set up a secure connection. We're trying to decide between building it internally, outsourcing it or using commercial packages.
Commercial security can have problems because everyone knows it.
Kronick's teams must cope with a mountain of federal regulations that mandate strict security procedures. In response, they're putting together a sophisticated PKI network that will safeguard a network of 3,400 users at 25 sites worldwide, using a fingerprint-based authentication system and smart cards. Finishing up a Windows 2000 deployment is the one thing that won't happen this year, Kronick says. While it didn't appear on Computerworld's initial survey checklist, several respondents pointed out that localization of computer systems will become more important as the year progresses. The more we automate our systems, the more stuff we put on the Web, the more we'll have to supply it in local formats.