While the proliferation of branch and remote offices is a positive sign of company growth, it can be a challenge for IT staffers. Besides managing data centers, IT teams take on the additional responsibility of managing and repairing branch office assets like routers, switches, firewalls, WAN optimizers and servers.

This paper addresses the added value (in terms of uptime and security) of out-of-band access and control tools for branch offices, and why out-of-band should be considered a critical component of branch office networks.