CHAPTER 8.4

8 . 4 Intranets

Intranets, an internal Internet Web of documents and information restricted to employees of an organization, are becoming a major tool for enterprises. More than one in five large corporations now run Intranets, according to Forrester Research, Inc., in Cambridge, Mass.(10)
Security concerns are a key motivation for the creation of an Intranet. Simply put, the Internet is not very secure and probably won't be for some time. A security infrastructure is slowly being deployed however, vendors and users alike are not used to authentication, single-use password, and encryption as a normal part of doing business on the Internet. Security concerns aside, Intranets are an effective and relatively simple mechanism to improve communications within an enterprise.
According to a Feb. 26, 1996 Business Week cover story, "Here comes the Intranet," some example of Intranets in use are:

Kiosks at Compaq Computer Corp. where employees can check on benefits, savings and 401(k) plans.

DreamWorks SKG (the new Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen studio) has Netscape browsers on all desktops so production managers and artists can check on the daily status of projects and coordinate scenes.

Ford Motor Co., where an Intranet links design centers in Asia, Europe and the U.S., and engineers collaborated on the design of the 1996 Taurus.

FedEx, learning from its highly successful public Web, (which is estimated to save $2 million a year) has 60 intranets created by and for employees. They are equipping all 30,000 office employees with Web browsers to provide access to the slew of news sites.

Silicon Graphics, with an Intranet called "Silicon Junction," allows employees to access more than two dozen corporate databases.

Netscape's Web site has an extensive set of "company profiles" and demos that highlighting "Intranets in Action." Their impressive list of companies using Intranets includes: 3M, Allen-Bradley, AT&T , Electronic Arts, Eli Lilly, Genentech , McDonnell Douglas, Mobil, National Semiconductor, and more.
The explosion of Intranets will cause a corresponding explosion for Web server software. Zona Research estimates that by 1998 revenue for Web server software, the backbone of any Intranet, will be at $8 billion compared with $2 billion for Internets.
Many companies already have the infrastructure necessary for Intranets. A Local Area Network (LAN), a Web server with browsers for the desktop, and a firewall to keep people out are the core elements of an Intranet. The Web, which has already provided a unifying view of the Internet, can provide the same service to an enterprise.
Most organizations have jumbled collections of information technologies serving different functions. Payroll, accounting, engineering, purchasing, employee benefits, travel expenses, and so on can often be found to function on separate, socalled "islands of automation." The Web presents a unique opportunity to unify these systems into an apparently single system. Unification of these systems is not simple, but a path now exists, an architecture of sorts, which, if followed, can give users better more timely access to companywide data, improving communications on the way.

[SECTION 8.5] [TABLE OF CONTENTS]

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