⟩ Is VPN a long-term solution or a short-term stop gap kind of thing?
VPNs are long-term solutions. VPNs may become ubiquitous and transparent to the user, but they will not go away. Because the problem VPNs address — privacy over a public network — will not go away. VPNs will exist from the desktop to the server, and at the IP packet level as well as the application data level.