Extranet is a private network connecting the networks and resources of two or more businesses to enable secure communication, collaboration, and commerce.
AlwaysON's Private Extranet Solution improves business relationships and supports higher degrees of cooperation between involved companies.
As a result, efficiency is increased, and communication is faster and more cost-effective. The solution is delivered by linking WANs or connecting to a third party network over the internet.
As Extranets are a particular type of VPN, a company network deployed on a shared infrastructure, they inherit the same security, management and performance policies that are usually applied in a private network.
The key benefits of the AlwaysON solution are:
Increased operational efficiency - Streamline your communication with your partners and customers; documents and processes are moved online, so that information such as product catalogues, price lists and documentation can be accessed or downloaded anytime, from anywhere.
Flexibility and scalability - Extranet VPN can easily be adapted to the changing nature of your interactions with your business partners, so as customers demand increase, the network investment will scale to support this new growth.
Automation - As systems, servers and applications can interact with each other, a high degree of automated communication and decision- making is possible. Customers, suppliers and partners have faster access to more accurate information.
Competitive Advantage - For example, e-commerce customers who want to track their order online, can access an order status application, which itself could, through your Extranet, check supplier systems to verify where exactly in the supply chain the product or its components are. Such possibilities for customers could very quickly turn into a significant competitive advantage, for any company.
Secure and private - Extranets can often be used to announce urgent confidential company news simultaneously to employees or business partners worldwide, in a private environment.
For a company to open its internal network to a business partner or a customer, security is not something that should be taken lightly. Only designated users or applications of these partners should be authorised to access your systems. Your business partners will also be able to protect their systems from unwanted access or improper use.
As far as the network in between is concerned, the security features of VPN technology takes care of data privacy and secure network connectivity.
AlwaysON VPN technology uses a combination of tunnelling, encryption, authentication, and access control mechanisms to carry traffic over the Internet or an AlwaysON IP backbone. These can include firewall server management, the issuance and use of digital certificates or similar means of user authentication, encryption of messages, and the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) that tunnel through the public network.