There are many different solutions for what you need and they depend on many
factors, I will just list a few below:
1). What type of connectivity is available between the offices?
2). How much IT personnel you have to support the systems?
3). How many data transactions you have?
4). Is the data segmented for each branch or shared?
A coupe possible solutions are:
1). Keep a central database and provide interface to all branch office via
Internet application (you can install SSL certificates to encrypt the data).
That will require to develop a Web application to manage your data.
2). Similar to the solution above but using VPN. Then you can use a Windows
application to access the data (I assume this is what you have currently,
based on you mentioning forms.net). Each branch office can have the Windows
application installed and it will connect over the VPN to the central
database.
3). Install databases at each location and then replicated the data with the
central office. You can still use VPN to connect to the central office to
guarantee secure communications. However, this solution may be less cost
effective and will require higher maintenance. But if you data is segmented
for each branch office and your connectivity is not good then this will be a
good option.
Here are a couple links that might be helpful:
Microsoft Solutions for Branch Offices:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...h/default.mspx
Branch Office Case Studies:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...sestudies.mspx
Building Secure ASP.NET Applications (this is more on the technical side):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...cnetlpMSDN.asp
Regards,
Plamen Ratchev
http://www.SQLStudio.com
"Blast" <Ky***********@gmail.comwrote in message
news:11**********************@m58g2000cwm.googlegr oups.com...
>I was wondering if someone can tell me what Microsoft Technologies I
need to employ for the given situation:
As a small business, we keep all of our data currently in sql server
and we only have one office. We use forms.net as interfaces to the sql
server database. However, we are looking into expanding to multiple
branch offices. We are also looking into a way to expose some of the
data to the internet, so certain data can be viewed anywhere.
My question is, all of the data from all of the offices need to be
synchronized. So, how does one go about doing this? Should the database
be held in a single physical location as everyone from branch offices
all remotely update and retrieve data? If so, how do you secure this
setup ( authenticate, authorize, etc)?
What other ways is there? Can anyone point me to some strategies? I
have read about ERP systems. They store all of their data in a single
database, how does that work when people from different office
locations need to connect to data?
