The introduction of the Intranet within the company allows both to install new applications quickly and increase the capabilities of existing applications by making them communicate. The new possibilities offered by the intranet within the company are many. Improving communication, the sharing of geographically dispersed resources to accomplish a task, the possibility of combining both a local presence by taking advantage of access to global expertise of the company, the creation of virtual teams without increasing overheads, the ability to provide service 24 hours a day 24 a new beginning each time in the world.
The first services to implement an Intranet are naturally those who have made the success of the public Internet and the first email. A recent survey by Gartner Group survey of 500 companies provided the top 5 applications Intranet:
The installation of an e-mail or connecting the local mail with the rest of the world via the Internet is the operation priority. The savings are immediate. An electronic message is from three to ten times cheaper than a fax in the distance. Its asynchronous nature, email adapts to jetlag. Attachments of all types reduce photocopying and allow modification and reuse of materials. One constraint: it must be used personally.
The establishment of an intranet with email is inseparable from the constitution and the provision of all a business directory that maintains information about employees, services or applications available and the controls of access. Such directory services are available on the network. Users will find information such as phone numbers and email addresses. Administrators manage access to services, applications also have direct access to this information. These directories, when they existed, were closed and proprietary. A recent standard (LDAP) directory will allow them to communicate and to exchange electronic business cards.
Access to the public Internet is the second feature that attracts businesses, either to disseminate information, exchange with customers and suppliers or sell. The presence on the Internet is virtually free media. Same individuals do not hesitate to publish their “home page”. The PC that is on my desk contains a small web server available worldwide. Internet therefore provides all businesses, regardless of their size, the same visibility in the global market of millions of Internet users. The fierce competition between the dwarf and giant Netscape Microsoft for dominance of “Browsers” Internet would not have been possible without the existence of the Internet as an information and as a distribution channel. Manage the editorial content of these servers is a difficulty not to be underestimated. I will not detail aspects of electronic commerce that are covered in another article in this issue Internet.
Access to corporate data is the third function of an intranet. For thirty years, companies have accumulated data vital to their operation. But each system and each technology has generated few blocks communicating with each other. Access to this information and any change is wired complex. Intranet technologies provide global interconnection. All users can access all applications if there are of course allowed. Technical constraints disappear. This interconnection allows the creation of virtual work groups (groupware) that evolve naturally and disappear depending on the life of the company. The data can then circulate and dynamic routing, orchestrated by workflow technologies, which adapt in real time to changes in the structure and procedures of the company.
The distribution and publication of information, records management functions are provided at low cost by the Intranet. In these areas, the savings are often difficult to quantify in front of some costs. Many companies (we belonged) had been reluctant to implement such services. With Intranet technologies, information that mostly already exist in electronic form can be made readily available to the community by the producers themselves. The distribution costs disappear. If the information is not yet in electronic format conversion operations, however, can still constitute a major obstacle.