The term intranet refers to distributed applications implemented on dispersed wide area network, developed and used primarily by members of a single organization.
It is simply an internal internet, closed off the outside world. Many companies have taken advantage of the cost benefits of internet technologies.
Communication and Collaboration
Intranet can significantly improve communications and collaboration within an enterprise.
A very important factor is the easy integration of legacy document & databases into an intranet structure. In its simplest form, the intranet can be used for archiving commonly used forms, newsletter and memos.
Intranet groupware features also can be used to improve team and project collaboration with services such as discussion groups, chat rooms, and audio and teleconferencing.
Intranet should closely link to the collaboration tools, ,messaging solutions and overall workflow.
With information residing in only one place in the web server, it is relatively easy and affordable to add new information or to update existing information and make it instantly available.
Web Publishing
The advantages of developing and publishing hyperlinked multimedia documents to hypermedia databases accessible on World Wide Web servers has moved to corporate intranets.
The intranet network architecture designed to serve the internal information needs of an organization using web concepts and tools.
Intranet is an excellent platform for publishing information internally.
It is deployable, as the web browser is available for virtually every operating system.
For example, information products as varied as company newsletter, technical drawings, and product catalogs can be published in a variety of ways, including hypermedia Web pages, E-mail, and net broadcasting, and as part of in house business applications.
A portal of web is a gateway as a web supersite that provides a variety of services including web searching, news, white and yellow pages directories, free e-mail, discussion groups, online shopping and links to other sites.
Intranet software browsers, servers, and search engines can help easily navigate and locate the business information needed.
Applications of Intranets
