The Australian Department of Defence has undertaken field trials to deploy Microsoft SharePoint into their tactical theatre. The tests have specifically focused on deploying SharePoint within a low and unstable bandwidth environments and the initial results are extremely positive.

The main focus of the project is the modernisation and strategic planning of communication and collaboration systems for Defence to increase the effectiveness of sharing information, collaborating and communicating. The communications team worked with the consultants at Myriad Technologies to perform initial proof of concept design and ultimately real world field trials of the technology.

Defence has traditionally relied on either Lotus Notes for its communication and collaboration environments, or built bespoke solutions. Whilst these solutions were robust, they are no longer keeping up with the demands of speed, agility and functionality of products like Microsoft SharePoint.

Some of the key challenges facing defence is the geographically dispersed networks both in Australia and abroad. The network connectivity between these sites is limited and due to the volatile nature of the environment the network availability cannot be guaranteed. Sharing information in these hostile environments has previously been limited and the need to exchange intelligence, mission and command data about operations in the field is critical.

Information interchange must be robust and guaranteed. It must also be provided where new Infrastructure is not always an option. Even where expensive communications infrastructure could be used, it does not solve the core issue of not wanting to replicate everything. In other words, fine grained replication is a core requirements of the solution. Further, the ability to replicate specific information on a specific schedule, rather than hit communication links with lots of less mission-critical data.

The solution needed to be able to operate autonomously, allowing collaboration on documents to occur in multiple locations regardless of the network status. To achieve this Microsoft SharePoint 2010 technology combined with Iora’s Geo-Replicator server to server technology is utilised.

Microsoft Office 2010 provides the upload centre to support variable and intermittent bandwidth connections between the Client and SharePoint Server. This allows strong collaboration on documents regardless of the transient state of a specific network connection. Intelligent throughput of the Office 2010 upload centre further facilitates keeping the throughput on the network at an optimal level.

iOra provides a highly advanced ‘Epsilon’ level of replication. This goes way beyond simply doing a ‘delta’ replica of data and provides the bare minimum bandwidth necessary to achieve replication of content. It is important to understand that the technology employed is not doing just compression (aka PKZIP). It is utilising a highly evolved byte level differencing engine to drive data interchange rates to the lowest level possible.

The solution involved common data that needs to be shared between locations to be replicated according to time and priority of the information. This fully honours security protocols on both the transport layer and the defined security at each location within SharePoint. Replication of other non-SharePoint data e.g. file system data is also possible with the iOra technology.

The replicated site structure provides a seamless and common site structure for users regardless of their location. This means that the same information can be accessed at the same time in the same way from any one of the regions, allowing teams to collaborate, reducing duplication and providing a ‘point of truth’.

By replicating the SharePoint content from one site to the other sites the solution provides an “always on” service which enables the users to access their content at LAN speeds rather than having to go through the slow, unreliable WAN connections.

A significant and clear financial benefit can be identified by comparing the cost of data being transferred across expensive links (or full upgrades to provide better links).
In terms of the benefits to Defence, they now have access to the full SharePoint platform capability – anytime, anywhere - literally!

The same technology can be applied to other areas of defence and other industries. Key examples being Mining, Maritime and essentially anywhere that require a better and more granular solution to network bandwidth and reliability.