There are a variety of multisite approaches, which are distinguished by the relationships between the sites and the types of resources the sites share. The multisite approach that makes sense for your environment depends, of course, on the nature of your business. Some of the more common approaches include:

These approaches are described below.

Note that these terms are not necessarily used universally, and a given term may have different meanings depending on the context. Also, these approaches are not rigid, nor are they mutually exclusive. A given multisite implementation may include aspects of any or all of these approaches. The terms are useful for making general distinctions, but the critical questions for any multisite implementation are what resources are shared across sites and what resources are not.