The ball is usually in the client's court. If remote connections to servers are prohibited by corporate policy, state laws or Federal regulations as in the case of HIPAA, I have to adapt to their requirements.

All of my applications are self-distributing. They only need to be copied into the correct directory on the server--AFTER they have been through beta testing--in order to automatically propagate to the necessary workstations. The IT staff initiates both the beta cycle and production distribution. It keeps them happy and in control of their servers. Maintaining program logic becomes my only job. I'm in complete control of that so I'm happy too.

In this case, though, the app is run on a single workstation. Somewhere, somebody in IT failed to differentiate properly between beta and production environments.