intranet–gaining edge

In the last few columns we looked at the

application potential of intranet and the relationship between the Internet, intranet, and

extranet. In this column we elaborate on the details of the intranet.

An intranet is a network that connects

multiple internal networks using Internet technology. In some cases it could even be the

reengineering of internal MIS applications using Internet technology. The greatest asset

of the Internet is its free access to everyone in the world using a simple and intuitive

interface generally known as the browser.

The browser could be Internet Explorer from

Microsoft or Navigator/Communicator from Netscape Communications. The browser software is

available on almost every hardware and software platform, namely, Intel-based PCs, Power

PC-based systems, Sun SPARC-based systems, IBM AS/400, Apple Mac, or Digital VAX. The

software platform could be the Mac OS, MS Windows 3.1, MS Win95, Unix workstation running

X11, or IBM OS/400.

The beauty of browsers is their consistency

across the entire family of hardware and software platforms. With the technology of the

'plug-in', browsers can fire an application like MS Word, MS Excel, or MS PowerPoint to

enable an Internet user to view MS Word, MS Excel, or MS PowerPoint files. Graphic images

such as GIF files, or JPEG files can be displayed online. Audio files such as WAV, RA

(Real Audio), or AU (Audio) files can be played if the desktop is equipped with a sound

card to play the sound files. Movie files such as AVI, MPEG, or MOV files can be played

from inside the browser window. More sophisticated use of browsers include the display of

digital movies such as Macromedia Director Movies, AutoCAD drawings, SPSS statistical

results, Adobe portable document PDF files etc. Such richness contributes to the emergence

of the browser as a universal interface to view millions of multimedia documents available

over WWW.

What makes the intranet more useful is its

ability to run interactive applications. Many applications in the corporate world demand a

form interface, a database lookup, and a report-based output. Traditionally data entry

software, middleware, and report writers used to meet these demands. In a large

installation, with hundreds, if not thousands of desktop computers, the installation,

management, and support of these three categories of software lead to significant costs.

The recent interest in minimizing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) announced by Intel

through its TCO initiative or the Zero Administration initiative (ZAD) from Microsoft

address these issues. Using a browser-based interface to replace these three components,

namely, data entry software, middleware, and report writer software, obviously makes

sense.



What is striking about the intranet approach is the use of open standards such as HTML and
HTTP. The use of these leads to savings in investments in any additional software on the

desktop. In addition, it frees the network administrator from the difficult job of

installing and maintaining many copies of the client software on individual desktop

machine.

In fact, intranet-based applications go

beyond data entry, database lookup, and report generations phases. Since the result itself

is presented using HTML (including dynamic HTML) the results could link to further

processes. For example, in the case of IIM Bangalore Library access, one cannot only

browse the Library content but also check for the availability of the book issue. If a

book has been issued out to a user the result will not only provide this information, but

can also be programmed to directly provide a link to the user's email address. Thanks to

HTML, by clicking on the hyperlink to the user's email address, another user, urgently in

need of that particular book can send an email requesting for the particular book with a

single mouse click.

The next stage of the intranet application

is to provide security feature limiting access to authorized users having access

privileges. Security on intranet is addressed at many levels. A user ID, password

combination can limit access to a select part of the web pages. A data encryption scheme,

using secure sockets, provides for confidentiality of the contents. Similarly, a more

sophisticated firewall can manage multiple levels of access, security, and privacy. A

proxy server can provide improved performance in spite of access security through

firewall. We will look at these technologies in the next column.

DR S SADAGOPAN



is Professor, Quantitative Methods & Information Systems, IIM Bangalore