What is Intranet

What is Intranet.

In simple terms, the Intranet is the descriptive term being used for the implementation of Internet technologies within a corporate organization, rather than for external connection to the global Internet. This implementation is performed in such a way as to transparently deliver the immense informational resources of an organization to each individual’s desktop with minimal cost, time and effort.

The impact of the Intranet affects a corporate’s operation, efficiency, development and even its culture. To fully understand what is meant by the Intranet we need to look at several areas, namely:-

-        today’s demands on business
-        the Internet and its technologies
-        the Internet vs the Intranet
-        the Intranet revolution

Before investigating each area in detail, let’s explore a single, simple example which puts the impact of the Intranet in context.

Imagine this scenario. Your company has 20 sites and 1000 people who need timely access to company news, corporate policy changes, Human Resource procedures - even simple, but crucial, documents such as phone books, product specifications and pricing information.

Normally, you use printed matter, such as employee handbooks, price lists, sales guides etc. This printed material is both expensive and time consuming to produce, as well as not contributing directly to the bottom line.

Once created, there is the question of distribution and dissemination. How can you guarantee that all your people have received exactly what they need? How can you be sure they have the latest and correct versions? How can you ensure that they even know that important policy details or other information have changed or are now available? The simple answer is, with existing technology, you can’t.

Add to this the problem that, due to the changing nature of any organization in today’s frenetic business world, the shelf life of any internal printed matter is reducing so rapidly that, in many cases, it is out of date before it reaches the people that need it. Many corporate hours are lost just confirming and verifying the validity of information.

Then we can start to consider the direct cost of preparation, typesetting, production, distribution and mailing. Add labour costs and overheads and the fact that during any financial year most documents require reprint in ever increasing frequencies.

For example a standard price book may cost in the region of $25 each to produce. Add the distribution cost and multiply this by the number of people who need it, and then by the number of times per year it is produced. We can very easily see the substantial cost that is required to deliver just a single, accurate document to one of our employees to allow them to perform their job. But if you also add the hidden cost of the people verifying accuracy and quality of the information the cost becomes even more astronomical. And this is just one document!

Today’s cost-cutting environment demands that you do ‘more for less’. But you cannot eliminate these internal communications tools. In fact, we know that increased communication is absolutely essential within companies. Also, we know these increased demands on our busy staff mean they do not have the time to waste chasing down the correct price or product description. In today’s competitive business arena, timely access to accurate information has never been as crucial as it now is.

The above example assumed 20 sites and 1000 employees, but the reality is that this problem is equally important to a single site with 20 people. Accurate, timely communication and information flow is essential in today’s world.

The problem described above is not new and attempts to exploit computer technologies have already been implemented, with different degrees of success. Implementations to-date have built-in gross inefficiencies and expense. For example, email which results in the unnecessary stuffing of employees mailboxes, or Client/server databases which puts an inordinate and expensive load on the MIS teams who end up being responsible for the
maintenance and update of the information.

The solution to the problem requires technology which:-

- can deliver information on demand - as and when needed
- can guarantee that the information is the latest and most accurate available

ensures that information can be held at a single source (although, there is no need for that source to be the source of all information) allows the information to be maintained by the people who would normally maintain and prepare the original information

The solution to this problem is provided by just one of the technologies available under the generic heading of ‘the Internet’. Different problems require different solutions, which is why the use of the full spectrum of Internet technologies within an organization will generate one of the biggest corporate IT revolutions as the birth of the Intranet becomes a reality.

Competition has reached a new level of intensity in virtually all industries. Mere survival, let alone success, requires that a business perform at unprecedented levels of effectiveness. The new pressures on business include:-

Reduced Product Lifecycles - time-to-market is becoming an ever more significant factor on the ability to achieve market share, profitability and even survival.
Increased Cost Pressures - the need to control costs, with the corresponding desire to improve productivity, continues unabated with renewed emphasis on the productivity of the knowledge workers.
Increased Demand for Quality and Customer Service - as competition builds, the increase in customer’s expectations for responsiveness and personalized support is beginning to change the culture and operation of many industries.
Changing Markets - the only constant for business is that things will change. The need and ability to respond to ever changing market forces continues to push the need to adopt and implement technology to be able to rapidly react.
New Business Models - constant change is now pushing into the very core of many corporates with corresponding new business models emerging for the way in which organisations and people work together. These include teleworking, virtual corporations, collaborative product development and integrated supply chain
management.

While each issue requires multifaceted strategies, the common link is the need to enable and expand communications within the organization, between partners and out into the marketplace. The internal adoption of Internet technology to create the corporate Intranet can make significant contributions to each of these critical
areas.

There is more than enough widely available literature on the background and history of the Internet. Unfortunately, due largely to the tremendous market hype, to many people the Internet and the World Wide Web, or more commonly simply the Web, are synonymous. Although the Web is an important piece of the Internet story, in reality the Internet is a series of components and layers of technology, each one meeting specific needs in a powerful and yet flexible way.

The main technology components of the Internet are:-

        Communications Protocol
        The ability to connect and communicate between networks and individual desktop devices.

        File Transfer
        The ability to transfer files between point-to-point locations.

        Mail
        The ability to provide direct point-to-point communication between individuals or groups.

        Web Browsing
        The ability to provide access to information on a one to many basis, on demand.

        Terminal Emulation
        the ability to access existing infrastructure applications.

        User Interfaces
        the ability to deliver the increasing technical complexity to the desktop in a transparent, seamless and intuitive manner.

During the evolution of the Internet, a series of applications have been created to meet the specific needs of each component area. Within each of these areas the survival of the fittest has brought several specific best-of-breed applications and standards. For example, the FTP protocol standard for file transfer, the Mosaic technology for web browsing, the MIME standard for transparent distribution of all file formats, the HTML syntax as the language of the Web, etc., etc.

Whenever you pick up a newspaper or watch the television, chances are that you’ll see a reference to the Internet. The Internet has caught the imagination of businesses, business people and individuals alike. Originally developed for sharing and communicating information between universities, government and
commercial researchers, the Internet has grown into a world-wide network with millions of users.

The individual component areas which make up the Internet are not necessarily new to corporates. It is the fact that, in the context of the Internet, these mechanisms, methods and technologies follow consistent standards which has the significant effect, when applied within a corporate organization.

In creating the Intranet, there are several main reasons why the Internet technologies have such a dramatic impact on the scope of business networking applications. These include:-

1.Universal Communication - Any individual and/or department on the Intranet can interact with any other individual/department and beyond to partners and       markets.
2.Performance - on inherently a high-bandwidth network, the ability to handle audio clips and visual images increases the level and effectiveness of communication.
3.Reliability - Internet technology is proven, highly robust and reliable.
4.Cost - Compared with proprietary networking environments, Internet technology costs are suprisingly low.
5.Standards - the adoption of standard protocols and APIs such as MIME, Windows Sockets, TCP/IP, FTP, and HTML delivers a fast-track series of tools which allows infrastructures to be built, restructured and enhanced to meet changing business needs as well as allowing
standards-based intercommunication between external partners, agencies and potential customers.

So is the Internet actually competitive to the Intranet? The answer is obviously a resounding No! To put it all in context, the Internet continues to define the chnologies available for external communication, whereas the Intranet is the application of these technologies within your organization and centred around the corporate LAN.

Internet technologies are actually extremely well suited for developing internal corporate information systems - the Intranets. In fact, Internet technologies are much more relevant and exploitable within a local LAN, right now, than over much slower, dial-up access routes associated with typical home-access to the Internet.

Within the early Intranet adopters, the application of this hot technology is being typically used as follows:-

1. Publishing corporate documents Along with oft-mentioned human resource guides, these documents can include newsletters, annual reports, maps, company facilities, price lists, product information literature, and any document which is of value within the corporate entity. This is one area where significant cost control can be achieved as well as much more efficient, timely and accurate communication across the entire corporate organization.

2.Access into searchable directories Rapid access to corporate phone books and the like. This data can be mirrored at a Web site or, via CGI scripts, the Web server can serve as a gateway to back-end pre-existing or new applications. This means that, using the same standard access mechanisms, information can be made
more widely available and in a simpler manner.

3.Corporate/Department/Individual pages As cultures change within organizations to the point where even each department moves towards their own individual mission statements, the Internet technology provides the ideal medium to communicate current information to the Department or Individual. Powerful search engines
provide the means for people to find the group or individual who has the answers to the continuous questions which arise in the normal day-to-day course of doing business.

4.Simple Groupware applications With HTML forms support, sites can provide sign-up sheets, surveys and simple scheduling. As the Intranet technologies continue to evolve, the press have been positioning the technologies as alternatives to major groupware applications (e.g. Lotus Notes) to such a point that this type
of rhetoric only serves to cause confusion as to the appropriateness of each area of technology. As always, it is not black and white. The Intranet technology can be used to complement or as an alternative to such groupware products. It all becomes a matter of scale, cost, timescale, openness and taste.

5.Software distribution Internal Administrators can use the Intranet to deliver software and up-dates ‘on-demand’ to users across the corporate network. This will continue to gain momentum as new technologies such as Java become more widely available from Sun, which will allow the creation and transparent distribution of objects on-demand rather than just data or applications.

6.Mail - Although email has been seen as being a ‘killer application’, its uses have tended to be limited and over-complicated. With the move to the use of Intranet mail products with standard and simple methods for attachment of documents, sound, vision and other multimedia between individuals, mail is about to be pushed further forward as a simple, de facto communications method. Mail is essentially individual to individual, or individual to small group, communication. With the
emergence of Web technology, there are now better and more appropriate tools for one-to-many communication which historically is where mail systems have been over-burdened and over-burdening to the point of reducing their effectiveness.

7.User Interface - The Intranet technology is evolving so rapidly that the tools available, in particular HTML, can be used to dramatically change the way we interface with systems. There will be a significant debate, which will shortly hit the streets, which will question ‘Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) vs End User comfortable Interfaces’ . At the beginning of the 90’s, the industry was deluged with the increases in productivity from GUI’s. However, no-one anticipated the converse loss of productivity by normal business users being able to access the wealth of functionality provided by Windows. The GUI has been defined by Microsoft as an iconic desktop. But, although this might be what technicians like - and like to believe it’s what users like - it is definitely not the interface that most business people are comfortable with. With HTML you can build an ‘End User Comfortable Interface’ which is only limited by the creator’s imagination. The beauty about using Intranet technologies for this is that it is so simple. Hitting a hyperlink from HTML does not necessarily take you to another page - it could ring an alarm, run a year end procedure or anything that a computer action can do. Microsoft’s Windows 3.x and Windows 95 created tremendous volumes of functionality, but
individuals probably only need 5% of the total functionality. The other 95% causes support pain, headaches and disruption. Now, with the Intranet tools, you can paint reality in HTML and make an in-context and uniform front-end to all computer-based resources. In doing so, not only can you create interfaces that users can use and appreciate , you can also remove the 95% functionality and access to elements that specific users don’t need - getting rid of most of your headaches in one
sweep.

Intranet technologies provide the tools, standards and new approaches for meeting the problems of today’s business world. The beauty about most of these echnologies is that they are simple and, in their simple elegance, phenomenal power can be unleashed. Due to the fact that these technologies are still moving from adolescence to maturity, there are many rough edges. The route ahead, however, is being well-defined and the new generations of Intranet products designed specifically for corporate use will address these. Communication is the key to business success. Exploitation of the Intranet is the key to effective and efficient
communications.