“You can’t be in two places at once,” Talal Choucair said, explaining the need for the ‘remote access virtual private network (VPN)’ he and his partner, Guillaume Baron, created when they saw the market opportunity for this kind of technology. “The tools we were using were either too complex or they didn’t fulfill our requirements, so we designed a prototype based on what we wanted to use ourselves.” After two years of aggressive development, Choucair and Baron devised a product that not only satisfies a personal, professional, and market need, but also indeed allows the user to virtually be in two places at once.
March 2008 saw the commercial launch of WallCooler (“it literally cools firewalls,” Choucair pointed out), and, over the past six months, the unique remote access-VPN solution has attracted tens of thousands of users and has a major presence in over 110 countries. “Our revenue is doubling every month,” Choucair revealed, speaking to WallCooler’s immediate success. “In terms of customers, the [MENA] region is one of our biggest growing regions … And we just recently discovered that someone has written an article about us on Wikipedia,” he continued, surprised that his product is now documented in the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet.
Seeing opportunity
Traditional VPN technology involves a very expensive server and equally expensive software and, after a complicated installation process requiring an IT professional, it allows the customer to access the files on one computer from a separate computer at a different location. “All of this together makes it a little out of reach for a lot of businesses,” Choucair explained. “The idea was that remote access shouldn’t only be the playground of big companies with lots of money and IT resources,” so he and Baron took the idea, developed their own unique version of the technology, simplified it for users (WallCooler’s target demographic is individuals and small businesses), maximized its features and capabilities, and significantly reduced the cost. “We took a very complex remote access system only available to big companies for a lot of money and IT resources, and we brought it to small businesses at a very cost-effective price, with no hardware. It’s a simple software — like Skype or MSN — that, once installed, can be up and running in minutes,” he summarized.
“With WallCooler you have access to your computer, direct access to all the files that are available on your computer, and you also have access to your entire office network. You can be sitting at your home computer or on your laptop at Starbucks, and connect to the office databases, print on your office printer, or send a fax if you have a network fax at the office,” Choucair detailed. He went on to outline the market for remote access-VPN technology, which has grown from $80 million in 2005 to $8 billion in 2008, as “the mentality of society is changing in terms of work culture; we want more flexibility and less constraints, and increasingly we are realizing the need for these solutions.”
Choucair cited his favorite example: “Two full-time working parents have a child that is ill and needs to stay home from school. Now the parents argue about who needs to be at work for their 10 a.m. meeting, or go to the office to finish their presentation… In this case, a remote access solution is crucial for employee and employer. With WallCooler, the employee can access everything he or she needs right from the home computer. He or she can fulfill social requirements or constraints without sacrificing work.”
WallCooler comes in three easy-to-install, ready-to-use versions: Wallcooler Standard, the free remote access service; WallCooler Pro, the full-featured remote access and VPN solution that allows multiple locations, but is limited to just one login; and WallCooler Enterprise, which is essentially the same service offered with WallCooler Pro, but ideal for small businesses because it allows up to fifty users. It is available for download on the company’s website, where fully animated diagrams and instructions walk the customer through the installation step-by-step. Creating a username and password is the only part of the process that really requires any active thought.
“We are about 80-85% cheaper than other existing VPN solutions,” Choucair claimed, hastening to add, “but that’s not the main point. What is important to us is what users want, which is quality and simplicity.”
