Yes, having local access will give you more performance than remote. If the IT team is setting up a VPN, I’d say let them go for it, there’s not a reason not to. For opening and working on an AE project, it will depend on what is in the project/how big it is/connection speed at home & the office.
Smaller AE projects will buffer in RAM and could be seamless, but that is for very basic stuff. Likely anything they are working on would need to be copied, then worked from locally. I’d have them set up the VPN then try.
ProMAX customers are all facing the same challenge. We put together a Remote Video Editing Workflows: Your Options blog. Given this is written for ProMAX customers/products, however most of the advice applies to most scenarios. I’d very much recommend the 40 min webinar reply at the bottom. Our VP of engineering really broke down a TON of good info for anyone that needs to understand some of the upsides and downsides of remote options.
Good luck!
Nathaniel Cooper
nathaniel@promax.com