INTRANET

What is Intranet

Intranets are internal corporate networks that use the infrastructure and standards of the Internet and the World Wide Web.  In other words, it is a small version of the Internet, which is basically developed and used by a corporation.  Customers or employees can access the database or information in a company through web browsers to reduce operating costs. 

One of the greatest considerations of Intranet is security.  That means unauthorized people can access a company’s data through the Internet.  To prevent this from happening, security software called firewalls has been developed.  It blocks unauthorized traffic from entering the Intranet.

Advantages of Intranet

• Publishing ease -

An Intranet is an excellent platform for publishing in formation internally. It is easily deployable, as the ubiquitous Web browser is available for virtually every operating system.

• Cost -

Most organizations have already established TCP/IP networks, and the incremental infrastructure cost of adding Web servers to the network is well within even departmental-level budgets.

• Ease of use -

Corporate users already have Web browsers and can instantly access the information on internal Web sites.

• Low maintenance -

With information residing in only one place - the Web server - it is relatively easy and affordable to add new information or to update existing information and make it instantly available.

• Scalability -

  Corporations will be able to deliver information systems on the least expensive computing platforms available and to scale their computing resources upward or downward as condition shift.

• Easy software distribution -

  Once PC users are equipped with Web browsers, new Web sites or pages with new information ( or new applications) can be added without incurring the expense of locating users, sending them updated client software, and supporting them through the upgrade process.

Disadvantages of Intranet

• Collaborative applications for Intranet are not as powerful as those offered by traditional groupware -

  For instance, Intranet include no built-in data replication or directory services for remote users, while groupware packages such as Lotus Notes do.

• Short-term risk -

  There are limited tools for linking an Intranet server to database or other back-end mainframe-based applications. Programming standards for the Web, such as common gateway interface (CGI) and Java, are fairly new and just maturing.

• Less back-end integration -

  With Intranets, firms have to set up and maintain separate applications such as E-mail and Web servers, instead of using one unified system as with groupware.*

*: source: Ravi Kalakota & Andrew B. Whinston, Electronic Commerce, p88-90, Addison Wesley Longamn, Inc., 1997.