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ComputerLink articles by Brian Pitre Intranets The corporate information center When talking with friends or prospective clients I frequently hear them make the statement "our company has an Intranet." As we talk further, I discover that they possibly may have an email system in their company, but not an Intranet. Email is the first step toward an Intranet, but very short of the proper definition: In’ tra net - n. 1. a network connecting a related set of clients using standard Internet protocols, esp. tcp/ip and http 2. the portion of an organization’s network restricted inside the firewall 3. the place within an organization to share information and collaborate The term Intranet became popular about two years ago when companies began adopting low cost Internet technologies and integrating them behind their corporate firewall. I find the terms Internet and Intranet easily confused; therefore, I would rather think the better description for Intranet is the "Corporate Information Center." This is where the culture and technology of the Internet is used internally in an organization to move towards a paperless office for the purpose of communication and collaboration. The acceptance of email as the most widely used service on the net and within organizations is due to its convenient and non-intrusive communications capability. There is great value derived from the ability to communicate freely with others when the thought occurs. The beauty of the system is the receiver gets the information when they are ready for it, as opposed to interrupting that person with a potentially intrusive telephone call. However, this convenience can lead to over-use, or incorrect use of email and can be the catalyst for a Corporate Information Center. I like to think of the need for a Corporate Information Center as the well-intentioned email user gone awry! As companies adopt the usefulness of email into their organizations, everyone begins sharing information that could be of potential value to others. This can become a problem when a message is composed and it’s only a click or two to add another carbon copy (CC) to the distribution list. This causes information to be routed quickly to many casual participants. That is the crux of the problem "just in case someone might need it!" Before you know it, people begin to drown each other with emails of little importance at that moment. Receivers of that information quickly delete the "just in case" emails, and information intended to be shared ends up lost and not easily recovered. By contrast, the Corporate Information Center enables everyone to share information, collaborate, and build a corporate-wide resource easily accessible by all. While using a Corporate Information Center, an organization (by using cost effective Internet technologies) can keep information on servers in various forms, which can be made available to coworkers when desired. This can be accomplished by indexing server technology, thereby creating the equivalent of a company’s own private Yahoo. Within the model of the Corporate Information Center, people who have information of value, can simply share with others by posting it to a server. Then the information can become accessible to everyone in the organization through indexing servers or catalog server technology. At that point, the information is accessible to everyone when needed, which is a better and more effective solution for information sharing within an organization (compared to "just in case" email messages). Internet technologies create a Corporate Information Center that provide the following benefits:
An Intranet and a Corporate Information Center require a well-structured plan and a shift in the corporate culture to think about information dissemination in a new "wired" way.
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