Using a VPN to connect their supermarkets to their corporate offices allows Quality Food Mart Supermarkets to easily distribute and manage pricing information for all locations.

Previously, pricing updates were delivered on a floppy diskette. The information on the diskette was then uploaded to the server at each supermarket. With locations as far as 50 miles apart, distributing pricing information would take literally all day - or longer.

With the Virtual Private Network, the server at each supermarket is directly accessible from the corporate offices, so pricing and product information can be delivered to all supermarkets simultaneously with the click of a button.

Some other advantages of this specific configuration include:

• "Split tunneling", which gives each supermarket the ability to use their broadband connection as both a VPN endpoint and for credit card, WIC and transaction processing (Internet access).
   
• Remote access allows the corporate office to remotely control any server at any store, at any time!

The benefits for our client in terms of both time and money are significant. The cost was far less than you might imagine, and the Cisco equipment provides a reliable and highly secure infrastructure.

There are other configurations that we've deployed and manage for our clients. For more information about VPN's, Terminal Services or any other networking questions you may have, please give us a call today.