Replica is a cost, bandwidth is an asset: geographically distribuited environment. What can we do?

that's my conclusion after months of work dealing with geographically distribuited enterprises: replica is a cost, bandwidth is an asset!

I'm not sayng that's the truth for everyone  and for every situation, but most of customers I've talked with agree with me on that. Why?

Replica is a cost because you've to manage it, you have to buy a lot of servers in varius region of the world (maybe you don't have IT also there), many storage etc. Replicate data have a cost, no way. What's the benefit? put documents nearest your users so they can access informations (like news, communications, blogs, wiki etc) and documents (intranet portal is my scope). Does this solve at all the issue, expecially when you've very limited bandwidth? my opinion is no. you cannot replicate everything, it's like in internet every server have all the contents of other servers: do that it's not your job in most of the cases. When you really need replica? when you're occasionally connected, for example if you're in a navy with satellite communications or when you're in a truck, for example to follow a race in remote zone of the world. So, replica don't solve at all the information access issue in distribuited environment I think: in some few situation you've to do, but in most of the scenarios replica don't solve the issue. [my personal opinion]

Bandwidth have an high cost, I know. And sometimes you cannot rely on bandwidht: in some countries simply you cannot update your network! you've to rely on 64kb if you are lucky and that's situation will be the same for a long time. In some scenarios you simply don't have bandwidth or you've to rely only on satellite that means be "occasionally connected" with also a bery poor bandwidth. When you're in a boat for example you can have 9.6kb for most of the time (when you've network!). BUT, in 80/90% of normal scenarios, invest on bandwidth can help to solve your needs better than Replica and the difference is that BANDWIDTH IS AN ASSET for your company: you can use in any way and from and IT perspective it is a good investiment, not only a cost.

So, what's my suggestion regarding MOSS 2007? Let's made an example: you're a big enterprise who works in 27 countries, with 20.000 users and very limited bandwidth in some regions plus some remote branch that are occasionally connected (trucks for example).

Consolidate in 3/4 main datacenter around the globe your network infrastructure, with good bandwidth (invest on that), for example 1 DC in New York, 1 in Italy, 1 in Singapore and 1 in Brasil. Suppose the main corporate offices and datacenters are in Italy ;-)

Consolidate the main portal architecture in Italy. That will be the "corporate portal" with the main formalized content (communications, news, pr, main business units, applications for everyone etc). Install MOSS 2007 here, with Shared Services. Main search is here and enable to search everywhere.

Put other MOSS 2007 servers in the other 3 datacenter but just for collaboration, mysite for people on the region and regional search. Consider that, like for email, people works 70/80% of their time with their regional team, so put collaboration in these datacenters can optimize bandwidht and offer good performances to all the people in the same region.

Invest in a better network between these main datacenters and the countries within the region, when you can, and evaluate hardware network accelerators lik Certeon (http://www.certeon.com/solutions/sharePoint_application_delivery_solutions.asp) or Cisco.

Use Groove in the Occasionally Connected scenarios, but take care of governance! Groove should be used with Groove Server (so you can manage who connect with others and how) and should be in sync with SharePoint, so you can have a centralized search and, most important, a governance. for example you can enforce policies on the sharepoint. If you're dealing with confidential information evaluate to use also Rights Management Services on top of that architecture.

if you still need full replica for some countries or trucks (at this point should be a real need), evaluate Syntergy or Iora.

thanks for your time, what do you think? If I've time later I'll try to paint a model of that topics. r