SharePoint users tend to think of SharePoint as a product for intranets – and it is. However, it also makes a great tool for assembling extranets. In particular, due to licensing details, an extranet built on Windows SharePoint Services provides a great environment at a low licensing cost for structured document exchange and interaction with key customers, vendors, and partners.

The Cornerstone SharePoint Extranet solution is a set of pre-built components and best practices, that, when assembled in your unique configuration, comprise a flexible solution that is tailored to your specific interaction needs and integrates with your line-of-business systems as appropriate. We have two in-house components that we use to rapidly tailor an extranet solution to your business:

·         HybridProvider – the HybridProvider is an authentication and authorization subsystem for SharePoint that is tailored to the needs of a customer extranet, where areas of the extranet need to be secured to individual customers, and customers may need to self-service their own users on the site. The HybridProvider uses SQL Server as a back-end store for external users while leveraging your existing Active Directory for internal users, on the same site. This component enables you to easily set up users in a secure fashion on your extranet without polluting your Active Directory, and enables your customers to be able to self-service their own users.

·         EntityBus – the EntityBus is an integration framework for enabling line-of-business applications to integrate and synchronize data within a SharePoint environment. SharePoint’s Business Data Catalog provides similar integration capabilities, but doesn’t provide any synchronization services and requires that each user have an expensive Enterprise CAL to access. Our EntityBus framework enables our teams to quickly integrate your SharePoint environment with your back-end systems such as CRM, ERP, and order fulfillment applications.