Microsoft Reverse Proxy Products

Microsoft has had a reverse proxy product of its own since it began providing Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server, which eventually became Microsoft Threat Management Gateway (TMG), and was a popular reverse proxy choice for many Microsoft Lync or Exchange deployments. TMG offered an intuitive graphical interface which many users were comfortable using to publish web services. Since Microsoft has made an end-of-life announcement for TMG, customers will have to leverage alternate products for Lync Server 2013 reverse proxy capabilities. Microsoft has also introduced guidance on how to use IIS Application Request Routing (ARR) as a reverse proxy for Lync.

Microsoft is continuing to develop the Microsoft Unified Access Gateway (UAG) product, but does not fully support all the Lync and Exchange publishing scenarios TMG provided. As of this writing, UAG 2010 still has issues with the Lync mobility service and is not recommended for new deployments.