Make Your SharePoint Deployment Run 5X Better

Introduction

Microsoft SharePoint’s promise of providing an efficient and user-friendly way for individuals, teams and departments to easily share information and content is extremely attractive. Adoption of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 is exploding. IT organizations are scrambling to deliver SharePoint services to their users.

Due to the complexities associated with managing and maintaining a decentralized SharePoint infrastructure, SharePoint experts agree that SharePoint deployments need to be centralized—even if the user-base is highly distributed. Unfortunately, using a centralized deployment to deliver a high quality user experience to distributed SharePoint users is a challenge. Like any Web application, centralized SharePoint deployments are highly susceptible to:

• Low-bandwidth, high-latency network links that bring application performance to a crawl
• Costly capacity upgrades to relieve overburdened servers and networks
• Planned and unplanned server, network and datacenter downtime that keeps users from accessing the content they need
• Difficult-to-administer VPN solutions that can’t provide the fine-grained control needed to securely deliver content to a diverse user base
• Incomplete security that can’t protect against application level attacks

These factors can negatively impact SharePoint performance and user experience. Since many SharePoint deployments are just getting started, if the initial user experience doesn’t meet expectations, long-term SharePoint adoption will suffer and its benefits will not be realized.

Fortunately, Citrix NetScaler provides a simple, all-in-one solution to the performance, infrastructure cost, secure remote access and security hurdles that SharePoint deployments face. NetScaler makes SharePoint:

1. Faster by accelerating performance to distributed users up to nine times
2. Leaner by cutting server and bandwidth requirements up to 50 percent
3. Smarter by intelligently ensuring SharePoint availability with L4-7 load balancing
4. Safer by delivering content securely, even across untrusted networks to untrusted devices
5. Simpler by integrating all necessary functionality into an all-in-one solution with simple, template-driven configuration

    

If NetScaler is used in conjunction with Citrix Branch Repeater, SharePoint runs even better. With Branch Repeater:

• SharePoint performance can be accelerated by up to 30 times
• WAN links run more efficiently
• Infrastructure is further simplified by consolidating branch Windows services onto a single, purpose-built appliance

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