Partners can get limited VPN access if there's a genuine business need, as far as I know. I can count one one hand the number of times I've needed to send a file larger than 5MB to an external contact. As far as remote offices go, we're all wired in together, VPNed out the wazoo, etc. Where I am is a non-issue - every site I've been to is on the company's network. Keep in mind I work at a pretty big company - about 90K people worldwide.

I'm sitting in the Chicago suburbs. My logon server is (I believe) in a building 5 miles up the road. My home directory is in the same building on another server. The new Exchange server I just got migrated to is in PA at our main data center. I believe the proxy server I'm hitting FT though is in NY. When I plug my laptop in at one of our plants, I just hit a different logon server, and everything works. Exchange is a little slow when I plug in over in Europe, but it still works.