Intranet: an emerging technology or a misspelling?
Nancy Stubbs (Editor: Stacy Walter)
The word ‘intranet’ was coined in the 1990s to describe the World Wide Web’s technology for private, within-company networks. It came about as a direct result of the advances of Internet use. Thus, some confusion evolved between the two terms ‘intranet’ and ‘internet’. Simply put, an intranet can be viewed as an internal web that uses the corporate network and existing internet products and technologies to combine graphics, text and video, allowing state-of-the-art multimedia (Cruickshank 1995, Houston 1997, Taylor 1997, Gupta, 1997).
IS AN INTRANET JUST AN ADD ON?
Traditional corporate Local Area Networks (LANs) have performed well for file exchanges and mainstream activities like network-based printing. But, it is potentially difficult and expensive to integrate data resources from different platforms into corporate LANs (Kirvan 1997). On the other hand, intranet tools are available for every operating system, from Windows to Macintosh to UNIX. What one develops for one platform will work on all the rest. Thus, programmers only need to know a few basics, such as hypertext markup language (HTML), Common Gateway Interface (CGI), and Java (Kennedy 1997).
Web servers are the key intranet engines. Many different kinds of machines can be configured as Web servers, ranging from Pentium-based workstations to IBM AS/400s, and even mainframes using a 3270HTML (hypertext markup language) gateway (Kirvan 1997). Figure 1 shows a typical office configuration before and after switching from a Local Area Network (LAN) to an intranet. Therefore, a company with a LAN already has most of what it needs to set up an intranet.
WHO’S OFFERING ACCESS?
The big software companies are leading the pack of investors with Windows NT, Windows 95 and Internet Explorer at the Desktop, providing access to the Web and running on one a standard server (Kirvan 1997, Sliwa 1997). Netiva 2.0 runs on Windows NT and Windows 95. These two concurrent licenses for the connections to the server cost $4, 999 (Sliwa 1997), and some large telecommunications companies, like MCI are using their own experiences with intranets as a way to prepare intranet products for customers (McCrory 1997). Spending on Intranets is expected to grow from $1.63 billion in 1996 to $7.83 billion in 1998, according to Zona Research Inc. of Redwood City, California. It is expected to outpace Internet projects by more than four to one (Kennedy 1997).
EVERYONE CAN USE ONE!
Intranets support a wide variety of internal activities such as collaborating with geographically-separated business teams, managing multiple projects, creating work-flow management systems, and providing up-to-date information on a wide variety of topics. Intranets can provide a universal interface for quick, precise internal communications and can be accessed anytime, anywhere (Gupta 1997, Houston InterWeb Design, Inc. 1998). An intranet is ideal for internal use, as it can only be accessed by individuals within an organization as well as outsiders who have been provided with passwords to enter the system (Cruickshank 1995).
CHEAP AND EASY
There are two major driving forces for the Intranet: need and cost. The need for enterprise-wide information delivery has become a driving force in the development of corporate intranets (Kirvan 1997). The need for both internal and distant communications has always been paramount to the success of business. The intranet is a major advance in solving the communications problems of companies, especially because it can use both static and dynamic information.
For most companies, the intranet is almost cost-free to set up (if they have a LAN), and any costs incurred are quickly retrieved (Burzawa 1997). According to Machlis (1997), it saved [one company] several hours on long-distance telephone calls for dial-up data exchange (or about
$3,000-$4,000 per month).
DE FACTO STANDARDS
Because the intranet is an offshoot of the internet and is a fairly young technology, few official standards have been set. The standard communications protocol is TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/internet protocol). It ensures that systems will communicate regardless of the operating environment used (Kirvan 1997).
The concerns regarding official standards and government involvement are well expressed by Lew Platt, chairman of Hewlett Packard, in his interview with Paul Taylor (1997) when he says, 'The information technology industry actually has done very well around de facto standards. These standards drive our industry much more than official standards. Government authorities clearly need to make sure that the spectrum is made available to the players, but other than that, they really do need to get out of the way. This is an industry that will develop more quickly without regulation than with regulation.'
OPPORTUNITIES, PROBLEMS, AND PROSPECTS
Intranets offer companies opportunities to solve age-old communications problems. For the first time, corporate America has a highly cost-effective technology that delivers just-in-time information, from both internal and external sources, in a transparent and seamless manner, while effortlessly breaking the barriers of time and space (Gupta 1997).
Intranets, however, are not without problems. Most of the problems involved