OpenVPN has allowed me to have the ability to VPN into my environment from anywhere, using Open Source technologies, which helps me control my costs. My clients have capitalized on it when WAN alternatives were too expensive to consider. Yes, there are appliance equivalents out there, but for full customization and low cost, you can't beat it, in my opinion.

It can securely do remote product updates, push out product updates; just like on our LAN, it's a virtual private network and we just push across our updates.

It allows us to actually use the Citrix server, just that simple.

This server allows you to connect to a network that does not have any public IP addresses. You first dial-up the OpenVPN to get onto the network, then directly use the private IP for the local device. Once the connection is made, we can do development work, maintenance, or whatever is required.

It allows us to give access to our office network in a safe and secure way to users, no matter which computing platform they use. 

It allowed people to remotely access files from their mobile devices. It was so easy for end-users to use that they were able to work more efficiently no matter where they were, whether at a client’s campus, home, traveling – wherever they had a device and internet access.

Interoperability between different offices. We didn't have to keep exchanging documents via email and other tech. We were able to maintain a common file store because of the complete VPN setup we had using OpenVPN.

My entire engineering team can access our infrastructure from anywhere in the world, securely.

Several years ago, I was working on a Consumer VPN service provider, and OpenVPN was a great base to provide such services. It is much easier to scale and troubleshoot compared to regular Windows-based VPN solutions or PPTP daemon.

Encrypted connections are, in all situations, better than unencrypted. So, security is much better with OpenVPN.

It allows our employees to work remotely across Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms.