What makes an
Intranet different from the WAN/LAN that most offices
already have? Email is already a fact of life in most
offices, the same with access to corporate databases and
proprietary groupware software. Intranet technology is based
on the TCP/IP and HTML communication technology of the
Internet; this means that Windows 95, Macintosh, and UNIX
can be easily integrated in the same network. Rather than
having an office based on one standard, individual
departments can use the Operating system that best meets its
needs. Internet software is generally cheaper and more
robust than proprietary WAN/LAN software. Email can be found
free (Eudora Lite), Browsers are free (MSIE, Netscape
Navigator if you cheat), and servers are free (Apache, Quide
Pro Quo). Rather than bloated, feature packed commercial
software, internet software is small single-purposed,
thoroughly tested and debugged. But the difference is not in
the software, it is in the attitude.
The key difference of the Intranet from
the old office network is that the Intranet is based on the
academic tradition of open communication of ideas. A
low-level employee in an organization has access to the same
information as one of the higher executives. Communications
can by pass corporate hierarchies. The purpose of an
Intranet is to harness the knowledge base of a
company.
The effect of this is that control of
information technology is no longer a function solely of the
IS department. IS maintains the servers and provides support
services, but the control of content becomes the
responsibility of the users. The technology becomes less
important than how the technology is used.
Of course all of this presumes that your
organization believes in the new buzzword of Intellectual
Capital. If breaking down corporate bureaucracy, empowering
employees, a customer-driven focus, open-communication
philosophy, intellectual property development, a knowledge
economy based, and human capital auditing, are not part of
your company's vocabulary than an Intranet would not be a
wise decision.
