Intelligent Intranets

What could be better than an intranet? You have your own internal enterprise-wide Internet or Web system where you can post and retrieve company news and information, work in progress, and gossip about co-workers. And the potential for group work with colleagues all over the globe is limitless. Really, the only flaw is that your intranet can be utter chaos from Day One – until you realize you have to start managing content and controlling access.

Intranets contain many documents and other data items, prepared by many people from many departments. How do you manage the process of creation and maintenance in this free-for-all environment? How do you use your intranet to improve your business?

Setting up an intranet is probably too easy and inexpensive, as Steven L. Telleen, the person credited with coining the term intranet, has found. Formerly of Amdahl Corporation and now director of strategy and business development at Intranet Partners (Santa Clara, CA), Dr. Tellen's mission is fighting the "lack of business scrutiny that is going into intranet protects.”

An intranet uses Internet protocols – TCP/IP – and Internet tools on an organization's LAN or WAN. The structure often uses Web-style pages of information. Users within the organization can post information and can access posted information. Although usually intended for internal use, sometimes the enterprise allows the outside world access to part or all of the intranet.

Open standards make intranets wildly popular. They are flexible, easy to implement and use, and platform and vendor-independent. Web browsers render information more accessible. Helper applications and plug-ins integrate browsers with existing applications. According to Netscape, about 50 percent of its Web servers are for intranets.

Web tools for receiving and publishing information are deceptively easy to use – and often deceptively free. All you need to start an intranet are a free server and free Web clients. A skilled user may be able to set up a Web site from scratch in an afternoon. And that is just where the problems can begin. It's as easy as finger-painting, and it can be just as messy.

As the first pages start going on-line, you start wishing for an HTML editor. Soon, users discover that the technology is simple enough for them to publish information on their own, and pages and servers start sprouting like weeds all over an organization. Tellen recounts that when information managers at large corporations run a Web crawler on their intranets for the first time, they often discover that about 30 percent of the servers that appear were previously unknown to them. "Unofficial applications and information seem to be the trademark of intranets," he notes. While the unknown may be exciting, it's not easy to control. Whether official or unofficial, an intranet needs managing. Probably the first thing a Web administrator will need is a set of administration tools to check links and fight "spaghetti."

Then mail and, perhaps, news servers become part of the system. As the organization starts using the net more interactively, CGI scripts implement on-screen forms, and back-office applications collect the data and feed it to an order processing or work flow system. To allow information to flow the other way, the Web needs a database link.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 790