PremierPoint Solutions Releases White Paper about Cost-effective, Enterprise-ready SharePoint Extranets
Nashville, Tenn. (PRWEB) October 23, 2014 -- PremierPoint Solutions has released a new white paper that examines the kinds of business problems a SharePoint extranet can help an organization overcome and explains a way to make extranet management and use secure, easy and affordable.
Titled “Providing Enterprise-ready and Cost-effective Extranets with SharePoint,” the white paper discusses how a SharePoint extranet can provide streamlined centralized access for partners, vendors and clients, and solve a wide array of business problems.
The paper also looks at real-world challenges organizations face in deploying an extranet, and how an add-on solution called Extranet Collaboration Manager for SharePoint (ExCM) provides the tools that are absent in SharePoint out of the box but are necessary for an extranet to work optimally.
“For anyone considering deploying a SharePoint extranet, this white paper is a must-read,” said Jeff Cate, president of PremierPoint Solutions.
An extranet is like an intranet that can be accessed from the Internet. It provides convenience and flexibility, saving time and money by cutting down on emails, phone calls and searching through paper file folders.
The same things that make SharePoint a great intranet platform also make it a great extranet platform. But there is a problem.
While SharePoint is built for collaboration and contains built-in collaboration tools, IT professionals who attempt to implement SharePoint as an extranet quickly find out there are many hurdles to overcome. In SharePoint, Microsoft’s extranet platform does not provide an easy way to:
• Deploy an extranet
• Secure an extranet
• Manage an extranet
• Empower users to solve simple login issues or perform simple administrative actions for themselves
• Facilitate simple user-friendly access
Out of the box, SharePoint has some notable deficiencies regarding extranet deployment and management. Security options and best practices are not clearly defined. Therefore, questions such as “Where should we store the extranet accounts?” and “What type of access security should we employ?” are left unanswered.
And, out of the box, SharePoint does not come with an extranet management console or with extranet management features of any kind. So, account administration is simply not possible.
In addition, out of the box SharePoint does not make it possible for users to do self-management. If they have a problem logging in, they have to call IT. Access to the SharePoint extranet can seem unfriendly and difficult – especially for inexperienced users – and unhelpful error messages can leave them stranded.
ExCM is a robust solution that numerous organizations worldwide have chosen to solve these and other problems, simplifying and streamlining the deployment, management and use of their extranets.
“SharePoint provides the extranet capability, and we provide the tools to make it smooth and efficient,” Cate said.
Click here to download this free extranet white paper.
Based in Nashville, Tenn., PremierPoint Solutions(formerly SharePoint Solutions) is a Microsoft Certified Partner and a nationwide leader in expert-led, in-person and online public classes on SharePoint products and technologies. The company’s software division professionally develops high-quality commercial add-ons for SharePoint. Many of the company’s courses and services are also applicable to Office 365.
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Don Beehler, PremierPoint Solutions, http://premierpointsolutions.com, +1 (615) 566-0776, [email protected]
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