AMEN! To rub salt in the wounds, SOX implementation in an existing company doing an IPO is, to say the least, horrifically *painful*! Nevermind all the 'wasted' money and time on compliance audits. "Oh, you have put in a ticket to make that little change" results in a ticket that several others have to touch/test/verify - thus even menial changes to systems can potentially rot for weeks. While I'm not saying it isn't good to have a paper trail / change log and verification of work, SOX adds a whole new level of idiocy to what would otherwise be 10 minutes of actual work. I can see some parts of it remaining viable, such as accounting practices - but most of the IT portions need to be trashed. One of my big beefs with SOX compliance is that it doesn't really mean better _anything_ to the company (though it *might* bring about a handful of better practices here & there). Instead, it saddles most of the staff with a bunch of inefficient 'busywork' - and in many cases extra software and other crap the company never really needed in the 1st place - all for the mere illusion of a better business 'machine' (one that honestly worked great before SOX came along). I'd love to see some real examples of how SOX has actually _improved_ companies that are forced to implement it...

Citrix would provide you with a place for multiple users to co-exist on. Yes, there also Linux and Mac clients for it that work just fine (incl printing and the ability to do file transfers).
Unfortunately, implementing Citrix can be a bit pricey especially if the apps your users will run are 'heavy' on resources - just means you'd have to build a bigger, meaner server ($$$!). Plus it will cost you recurring yearly licensing fees... But for accessibility for remote users, you'll be hard pressed to find a more manageable solution.
Its just a suggestion so that the very large files your users manipulate would remain on your server LAN only. Needless to say, access to the Citrix box should still go over VPN for security reasons.