Outlining Business Requirements and Extranet Considerations

The business should understand the requirements and goals clearly in the early planning stages before deploying an extranet solutions and environment. The business requirements will help identify the different design considerations for their extranet. These are some of the most common design considerations for extranets:

• Network topology and accessibility— Different topologies serve different needs and requirements and can greatly affect the infrastructure used to provide access. The different topologies can also affect the different types of access requirements used to access shared network resources.

• Identity management (IDM) systems— Used to identify a specific user and to store additional information related to that user. Different identity management systems impact how accounts will be managed and how other systems can interface with the platform.

• Content security and isolation— Often content has to be isolated from other external users in common extranets scenario.

• Antivirus solutions— Ensuring that external users can access secure and virus-free content and data.

• Rich client experience (Office client integration)— SharePoint offers a rich client experience through Office client integration, where users can edit Microsoft Word documents directly from a SharePoint site using different authentication providers while avoiding multiple authentication prompts.