Intranets: An Internet Inside the Organization

Since their inception in the mid 1990’s, adoption of intranets by large and medium sized organizations has increased at much the same rate as the Web at large. Just as public Web sites have evolved over time, so have intranets. No longer are they simply used as a publishing medium; now they encompass a variety of applications designed to support decision making, complex business processes, and communication and collaboration among teams. This chapter examines some of the technical underpinnings of intranets, considers the differences among intranets, extranets and the Internet, and explores those situations and applications where intranets are preferred to traditional client/server offerings.