This chapter is dedicated to a series of issues that are important in the consideration of using an intranet as a strategic application for your organization.
Specifically, in this chapter we will look at:
In general, we view the information that is parsed by an intranet as that which resides on a server. The server can distribute information that is already in HTML format, or it can use CGI scripts to reach into compatible databases-such as an SQL database, an Oracle database, an Informix database (and the like)-and perform various functions with that data. For example, the data can be used to create dynamic Web pages (those in which the HTML is developed on the fly based on the specific query received by the server and how the CGI script tells the server to return associated information).
If the world had been a client-server environment throughout the history of business computing, this would be a simple and elegant solution for the sharing and manipulation of all the data that resides in any organization's data warehouse. Unfortunately, that's not the case. The world was largely a mainframe environment for many years, and despite the evolution to a client-server configuration, much of the data that was stored in mainframes continues to reside there. This raises a number of issues related to the establishment of an intranet, such as:
However, data that resides on mainframes can, in fact, be integrated into the intranet infrastructure, and a number of products have emerged from the marketplace to accommodate that need. As intranets continue to grow in popularity, no doubt additional systems also will emerge that simplify the process. So far, several approaches have been developed by different elements of the industry:
Salvo, a Web-based emulator product from Simware, bridges the gap between Web browsers and enterprise data sources; the product is spanking brand-new, released on July 31, 1996. It allows information stored in both mainframe applications and AS/400 applications to be viewed on intranet browsers. The product was pilot-tested at Texas A&M University, where students were given access to campus-wide information that was housed on legacy mainframe systems. According to the director of Computing and Information Services at Texas A&M, Web browsers had become ubiquitous on campus, and the need to create a link between those browsers and a variety of systems became critical.
The key to Salvo is an "information request broker," which enables the access to a variety of types of enterprise information by translating requests for information received from the end-user via HTML (or the Open DataBase Connectivity (ODBC) protocol) into requests for data that can be understood by existing databases and applications in the legacy system.
In fact, organizations can use a blend of capabilities built into Web applications-such as CGI scripts-and Information Request Broker capabilities in order to ensure that the corporate Web can accommodate employee needs for information. SimWare, the developers of Salvo, identify five levels of Web-enabling applications: transportation, emulation, enhancement and automation, integration and transformation, creation and synthesizing.
The lowest level provides a connectivity path to send current data in response to a request. A Web browser's ability to emulate the "green screen" terminal application from an IBM 3270 or 5250 meets this need, which adds no particular value to the data, but merely presents it as-is.
The next level up the hierarchy allows those using their Web browsers to access host terminal applications. In this instance, the Information Request Broker does dynamic conversion of data streams from the terminal into HTML, and then back to the terminal. Users in this instance would not need exact "green screen" emulation, permitting the company to open host applications to employees who have no terminal emulation of any kind.
An enhance capability improves the presentation of the information, while a scripting language can provide automation features that assist the employee by navigating the enterprise application for them.
Information Request Brokers begin to add significant value when the organization uses it for more than simply mirroring the functionality of existing systems. Beyond this simple capability, the Broker can be used to create a shell interface that makes the many different applications throughout the enterprise system appear as a single integrated system, further enhancing the metaphor of the intranet as a single, integrated information infrastructure. It also can enable various database systems-even those that reside on different platforms-to work together by transforming data from one system into the format required by another system.
By providing a framework for compacting data and returning it back to its source, an Information Request Broker permits companies to develop completely new Web applications based on the information, and to synthesize new information from the data that already resides on the systems. Remember the third advantage that new technologies offer: to do something that was never before possible. This create-and-synthesize capability offers the opportunity to do exactly that.
Information on Salvo is available from http://www.simware.com.
| NOTE |
Remember the third advantage that new technologies offer: to do something that was never before possible. This create-and-synthesize capability offers the opportunity to do exactly that. |
Attachmate, at http://www.attachmate.com, is another company providing a similar solution, which it calls a Host Publishing System, developed by Emissary, the company Attachmate recently acquired. The Host Publishing System operates in a similar manner to Salvo, providing seamless access to mainframe host and client-server applications from a Web browser. According to Attachmate, the Host Publishing System connects first to any mainframe or database, then offers a set of communication "middleware" tools (marketed under the brand name "EXTRA!") that allow developers to select any screen-based data or fields, query relational or non-relational database records, re-map host business logic, and other activities. The data is then converted dynamically to HTML.
Attachmate claims that anyone who knows how to use graphical client-server development tools can produce applications that exchange data between legacy systems and Web browsers in five steps.
In the months ahead, I also would recommend checking intranet indexes available on the Internet (several are listed in Appendix A) to follow links to new products and information about how an intranet can access legacy systems.
In addition to systems that may, at first, appear to be entirely incompatible with the intranet, every organization also will be faced with a host of documents that are not consistent with the HTML approach to information. Contracts were developed in word processor programs; budgets were created from spreadsheets; magazines, brochures, and advertisements were assembled using desktop-publishing applications; company logos and graphic standards were put together in a host of graphical applications and saved in myriad formats that Web browsers won't recognize. What is to be done with all of this incompatible data?
A variety of solutions are available to make it easy to integrate existing information in the intranet environment.
Software is available that translates existing documents into HTML. The most comprehensive package I have found so far is called HTML Transit, produced by InfoAccess (and available for a 30-day trial download from http://www.infoaccess.com). HTML Transit allows you to define a wide variety of HTML styles and formats based on the styles already assigned to your existing document. You can incorporate graphics, page breaks, navigation tools, and other elements into the style guide. Then you simply click the button that translates the document into HTML. The program also generates a table of contents and an index, if you wish. HTML Transit automatically translates tables, lists, and other elements that require a fair amount of HTML coding when done by hand.
A light version of HTML Transit is incorporated into the Corel Web-developers package, Corel Web.Designer, which also incorporates an authoring tool and 7,500 GIF and JPEG images. Information on Web.Designer is available at http://www.corel.com/corelweb/webdesigner/index.htm.
An Australian company, Stattech, produces a translation package called E-Publish, which also doubles as an HTML authoring tool. Information is available at Stattech's Web site, at http://www.stattech.com.au.
Many documents can be converted easily from their existing format to a Rich Text Format (RTF) using the "Save As" function. RTF is a Microsoft format designed to serve as an open format for exchanging documents between Microsoft Word and other word processing packages. Other software that has adopted RTF as a "save-as" format include WordPerfect, FrameMaker, Interleaf, and other applications developed for Apple, Macintosh, PC, UNIX, and Next. A freeware package called rtftohtml is a filter to translate RTF documents to HTML, available from http://lenti.med.umn.edu/rtftohtml_overview.html. The package also can be used to author new documents for the Web. rtftohtml is available as a Macintosh binary, as a source package for UNIX, as a sun4 binary, and as a sun4 Solaris binary.
In addition to these translation packages, many newer applications (and upgrades to existing packages) are incorporating Web translation functionality that addresses specifically those documents that are created with that application. For example:
Viewing legacy documents in HTML after subjecting them to a conversion process is not the only option available. A host of viewers have been developed that enable you to allow employees using the intranet to see documents in their native format. There are three approaches to this solution:
Adobe Systems Incorporated innovated the notion of a "portable document format" (PDF) with its Acrobat software. This approach uses a filter to "print" a document created in any application and create a graphic representation of the document. Users launch a "reader" to view the document. The word "portable" comes into play because the same PDF file can be viewed on Windows, DOS, Macintosh, and UNIX platforms as long as the user has the appropriate platform-specific reader loaded on his or her machine. The readers, incidentally, are distributed free by Adobe, and can be retrieved from Adobe's home page as well as various niches of CompuServe, America Online, and other commercial services. Additionally, those who purchase the Acrobat software are free to distribute the readers without limitation.
When the Web first emerged as a graphical environment, PDF files from Acrobat were viewed in the Acrobat reader, which was launched as an independent "helper" application-users had to physically associate the PDF extension with the Acrobat reader; when the user double-clicked on a PDF hyperlink, the browser knew that it had to launch the Acrobat reader. If the association had not been made, the browser would return an error message. Now, however, Acrobat is available as a browser plug-in, so that it launches as a part of the browser window.
Through the use of ActiveX controls (which are covered in "The Future" section of this chapter), Web browsers also can display Acrobat files within windows embedded in a Web page. The Nature Conservancy of Washington State, for example, uses this technique to incorporate Acrobat-functional maps of wildlife refuges into Web pages.
Adobe Acrobat is not alone in the field of portable format applications. Competing with Acrobat is Envoy, originally a WordPerfect application, then owned by Novell when it acquired WordPerfect, and now a part of Tumbleweed Software. Another competitor is Common Ground, initially an independent company acquired by Hummingbird to become part of its intranet suite of applications. Both Envoy and Common Ground function the same way Acrobat does, by "printing" a document through a filter in order to create a portable document file that is viewed on each product's proprietary viewer, which are freely distributed. On the Internet, it probably makes sense to use Adobe Acrobat because of its penetration of the market. Within your organization on the intranet, though, you are in control of the applications that reside on all employees' workstations, and you can set the standard. Therefore, you should evaluate the merits of each of the options and select the one that makes the most sense for your organization, should you opt for the portable document solution.
You don't necessarily have to go to the trouble of converting existing documents into portable documents. It is altogether possible for employees to view documents in exactly the format for which they were designed by using viewers developed specifically for that purpose. There are many viewers available, and a list of some of the more common ones appears in Appendix C.
Microsoft, for example, offers viewers for Word and Excel documents. KEYview is a product that supports some 200 file formats. The idea here is to make the original document (in its .doc, .wk1, or other format) available from a Web-based hyperlink. Clicking on that link would activate the viewer, allowing the user to see the document as it was produced; no special action is required to prepare the document for viewing on the Web.
Finally, employees actually can launch the application software required to view a Web-based document stored in its native format. If, for example, an employee is accessing a WordPerfect document from a Web site, she can simply associate .WP documents with WordPerfect, which will lead the browser to launch WordPerfect.
Of course, any revisions the employee makes to the document would be saved to his or her own copy of the file and not to the version he or she accessed.
This is not a problem if the employee merely wants to view the document, or needs to customize it for her own purposes. The ability to work on the document within the Web environment, though, is addressed by such applications as Intranet Livelink from OpenText, which creates a library of documents that can be checked out and returned; an overview of LiveLink was presented in Chapter 10. Additionally, Microsoft is working on its Microsoft Office 7.0 suite, which will integrate its Office applications into a Web environment. More on that in "The Future" section of this chapter.
Prior to the introduction of intranets, groupware was available-and continued to evolve-as the most likely means of sharing information and collaborating across computer networks within organizations. While a number of groupware solutions were developed, one grabbed hold and penetrated relatively deeply into the marketplace.
Lotus Notes-like its less successful brethren-is, at its core, an intranet in its own right. The primary difference between Lotus Notes and an intranet as we have defined it in this book is that Lotus Notes is a closed system, while the TCP/IP-enabled intranet is an open system. In order to use Lotus Notes, you need to buy that particular product; additionally, you need to buy enhancements that are developed specifically to work with Notes. Notes databases and interaction between the desktop and databases is complex, and generally must be created by an experienced and knowledgeable Notes programmer. On the other hand, a TCP/IP-based intranet can be developed with virtually any software that has been created for use on TCP/IP, including much that is free or cheap. You can mix-and-match various pieces of software to meet your needs, and there is no unique code-writing to learn-any programmer who writes PERL or TCL or C+ or Visual Basic can make an intranet go. Developing screens, publishing, and sharing information is something anybody can do; it is not limited to experienced programmers and systems professionals. As new intranet applications emerge, it is easy to add them on rather than upgrade, as the proprietary Notes requires.
There are distinct differences between Notes and an intranet in terms of the advantage they bring to an organization. These range from security to database replication. Let's explore some of these differences.
Notes-About $69 per user for client (user) software. Start-up cost is about $245,000, requiring such features as special leased lines and a dedicated server. Another study pegs the price at about $250 per user, including client and server requirements.
Intranet-As little as $20 per client for browser software. Start-up cost can be as low as $1,000; more commonly about $10,000 and up.
Both solutions will operate across IBM, Macintosh, and UNIX platforms. However, Notes versions for different platforms have some differences; for example, the Macintosh does not offer "background replication." Intranets are based on the premise that functionality is identical across all platforms. However, Lotus Notes cannot operate from a Macintosh server-only Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2, and some versions of UNIX. Intranet servers-which come in a variety of flavors, some of which are free-run on Macs, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2, and all UNIX configurations, including the free version of UNIX known as LINUX.
Notes-One of the key features of Lotus Notes is its "replication" feature. Since Notes databases reside on various servers across a company, if somebody makes a change to a database, that change needs to be reflected on all databases. When somebody logs into Notes, the first thing it does is replicate the latest changes to databases across the system. This synchronized replication can take a long time, particularly for those logging in from remote sites.
Intranet -An intranet is based on getting information from a single source. Wherever you are on the system, you access the database on the one server where it resides. The access is generally instant, since you use a program that has been added to the server that allows you to retrieve information from the database in real time.
Notes-Documents generally can be created by users, but how they are managed rests with the IT staff.
Intranet-Documents can be created and managed by the users, freeing the IT staff to focus its resources on more programming-intensive efforts.
Notes-This is one of the key strengths of Notes, taking advantage of built-in messaging technology to route documents between users and applications.
Intranet-Special workflow applications need to be built, although companies like Open Text are developing intranet solutions that integrate such capabilities into a single intranet suite of applications. Additionally, Netscape (maker of Navigator, the most widely used Web browser) has purchased Collabra and plans to add workflow to Navigator 3.0.
Notes-Adept at distributing information across its network.
Intranet -Technology was built to distribute information.
Notes-Works on TCP/IP, SPX, IPX, NetBeui, and AppleTalk networks.
Intranets -Work only on a TCP/IP protocol. If your network runs on the TCP/IP standard, you're ready to roll. If not, you'll need to change the network protocol, which can be an expensive and difficult process.
Notes-Uses the RSA standard for data encryption across the Notes-enabled network and in each of its applications. RSA is the strongest data encryption available.
Intranets-Use Secure Socket Layer protection. This level of protection is largely untested, and has not become much of a standard at this point.
Of course, security for both from outside attacks is handled either by keeping the system isolated from external access or by using other fundamental security techniques, notably firewalls, to keep outsiders out.
With Notes, you can create an electronic file that can be shared by many users, whether they are on the same network, on different networks, or on the road. As an employee works with a copy of the database, the changes she has made will be periodically "replicated" to the copies of the database that others are using. The same thing happens with the copies of the database that other employees-whether working on separate projects or members of a team-are using.
Because of replication, the Notes network (or multiple Notes networks) and an employees' computer-desktop or laptop-can all have copies of database. An employee on the road, therefore, can be sure that the files on the company's or client's network are current, reflecting the latest revisions.
The Intranet has no such automatic functionality without the addition of specific third-party tools to make it happen, such as the document- management capability of OpenText's LiveLink (which would only handle the documents in a specific project team's document library). Otherwise, managing such updates would require a physical effort by the Webmaster to make sure that mirror sites were regularly updated.
Notes offers several other distinctions. All of its functionality is contained in the single package, and no additional add-ons are required. It also facilitates work that is conducted while not connected to the system, whereas access to the intranet data requires a direct real-time connection to take advantage of the information that resides there.
Despite the differences between Lotus Notes and the intranet, they are far from mutually exclusive. In fact, recent efforts by IBM (which owns Lotus) has propelled the Notes environment squarely into the world of the Web, and Notes now can become an integral part of the Web. There are a series of features that enable this capability, and detailed descriptions are available from Lotus. The keys are:
Does it make sense to use Notes over the Web? The Web over Notes? A merging of the two? The answer depends on the circumstances of your organization. In general, though, consider the following suggestions:
Do not scrap the investment. However, if you want to take advantage of the simple Web-based interface, it does make sense to integrate Lotus Notes into a Web environment. This is the approach 3M took in creating a seamless information infrastructure. The organization believes employees using the information do not need to know what goes on behind the scenes as long as they have access to the information they want through the common Web desktop. 3M's strategy was to leverage and capitalize on both technologies in order to serve the information needs of the employees. Employees who are current Lotus Notes users have been given InterNotes in order to provide them with Web access; other employees will access Notes data through the Domino server. In the meantime, Web servers are springing up throughout 3M. The company may one day choose to phase out Notes should developments on the intranet provide a greater ability to meet information needs; they will continue reassessing their requirements and the technology available to meet those requirements. For now, they will continue to implement a mix of the two, and offer the training and support required to make them work to their best advantage.
Lotus Notes offers a high level of security and database replication. If these are critically important-and you cannot find appropriate solutions in a Web environment-Notes may be a viable alternative. Personally, I believe that intranet development will solve these problems, though, and Lotus Notes's advantages will dissipate over time, leaving the future of the product line in doubt. Thus, I believe that an internal information infrastructure being built from scratch will be most successful and effective over the long term if it is built with TCP/IP using Internet technology.
It would be foolhardy to predict the future in terms of what an intranet might look like and what it might accomplish in the years ahead. Intranets represent a technology that is in its infancy, and its capabilities will be based on the innovations of developers, programmers, and users working together to capitalize on opportunities and create solutions to problems that were never before conceivable.
What we can predict with reasonable certainty, though, is that new technologies that are emerging today will find their way into the intranet environment and change the look and shape of intranets in general. Four technologies on the horizon are worth noting as you plan for your intranet and develop a strategy that leaves room for growth and the introduction of new capabilities. Those technologies are:
We'll explore each of these briefly; just enough of an overview to suggest what these applications can mean to the intranet of tomorrow.
Java is a programming language from Sun Microsystems originally
designed to function in household appliances. When that application
failed to evolve, Sun engineers continued to evolve the language
until it became apparent that its cross-platform functionality
was a natural for the Internet. As a language, Java is used to
develop "applets," applications that reside on the Web
server; the command that launches the application is embedded
in the HTML that is parsed to the client. The application is loaded
into the client's machine, where it runs in conjunction with the
rest of the Web page. That is, the actual information exchange
that occurs between the Web page and the Java applet takes place
on the client's machine, requiring no server action. As a result,
calculations can be performed much faster, and data can be pumped
to the client's computer without having to repaint the Web page
each time information is updated.
| NOTE |
The actual information exchange that occurs between the Web page and the Java applet takes place on the client's machine, requiring no server action. |
JavaScript is a subset of Java, allowing actual code-written in ASCII-to be embedded in the HTML. Java-enabled browsers can read JavaScript and run Java applets.
The value of Java in an intranet cannot be underestimated. Consider some of the possibilities Java can bring to an intranet:
The Finance Department can create spreadsheet applets that are pre-configured and formatted with annual budgeting information. Department managers instructed to visit the budgeting home page automatically pull the applet down and view the spreadsheet; they fill in numbers as they relate to their department, which are calculated on the fly. Only when the spreadsheet is complete and the manager is satisfied with it does he or she click the Submit button, sending the data back to the Finance Department's database. The same functionality can be brought to expense accounts and other financial documents with which employees must deal.
Employees accessing the company's stock price-along with those of any key competitors or customers-can see the price in real time, constrained only by the mandated delay from Wall Street. As prices are updated, the price change would be reflected in the data that appeared on employees' screens. New Java technology would even enable employees to retain the stock ticker on a corner of their desktops while viewing other elements of the corporate Web.
The Sales Department can develop color-coded territory charts to display information about sales graphically. Employees can select and unselect various elements to view the chart differently. For example, one choice may be to view the chart by all sales, sales over $100,000, sales between $50,000 and $100,000, and sales under $50,000. Another selection might be for sales of items from all categories, category A, category B, and category C. Thus, an employee could view a chart that showed all sales of over $100,000 from category B and obtain instant understanding of the company's sales efforts. (Java-enabled browsers can see a popular version of this capability right now on ESPN's Web site at http://espnet.sportszone.com-pick a batter from the National League and view how he has hit: different types of hits are in different colors placed on a graphic of the baseball field. You can only show certain types of hits, whether they came on an even count, ahead of the count, or behind the count; pitched by right-handers or left-handers; and so forth.)
These Java capabilities should revolutionize the speed with which people can access information and the ways they can see and use it.
ActiveX is an open, cross-platform standard with which developers can create interactive content for the World Wide Web. ActiveX makes it possible for interactive software components to work together over a Web-based network regardless of the language in which they are written.
If it sounds like another version of Java, guess again. ActiveX allows developers to use tools they are already using, including Java and Java-enabled tools, not to mention Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C++, Borland Delpi, and Borland C++.
ActiveX was developed by Microsoft based on its former OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) technology; Microsoft recently released ActiveX to a public, non-commercial body to develop further. Developers insert ActiveX controls into the HTML and, therefore, onto the Web page. Users manipulate the controls to activate non-HTML programs, including Java programs. It also can be used to view non-HTML documents, such as a Word or Excel document.
ActiveX links Java applets with objects created in other languages; using this capability, Java programmers can link to ActiveX controls directly from their Java programs. Conversely, objects written in other programming languages can link to Java applets.
The components for ActiveX enable Web pages to handle the following types of actions:
Some of the potential applications for ActiveX on an intranet include the following scenarios:
An employee needs a diagram of a new facility. The diagram itself is huge, too big to fit on a screen. It has been captured, however, in an Adobe Acrobat file, so the employee is able to view just the part of the map he needs by opening the PDF file in a window on an HTML page and move the map around by clicking and dragging until he gets to the part of the map he needs.
An employee wants to manipulate data quickly from the vast amounts of information contained in a database. Activating an ActiveX control, he is able to control the grids, rows, and columns to show data any way that makes sense without ever having to download the data to his own computer. Or, he can choose to view the data in any of a number of chart or graph options.
Employees can view VDOlive audio-video streams directly on their browsers without needing to launch a helper application.
A Web page developer can add an icon on which the employee can click to open a standard-looking menu. The menu control fires events that the author can respond to via VBScript code.
ActiveX will provide greater flexibility and the ability to create dynamic and unique pages that offer more functions. Look for them to have a great impact on the future of intranets. ActiveX currently is built into only the Microsoft Internet Explorer, although Ncompass makes a plugin to enable Netscape Navigator to take advantage of ActiveX controls.
One of the biggest complaints Web page designers have voiced is the inherent limitations of HTML. HTML was created, after all, to provide academics-notably particle physicists-with a hyperlinked environment that would make it easier to bounce around from a research document's footnote to the document referenced in the footnote. NCSA Mosaic- the first of the browsers-and subsequent iterations were designed to provide a graphical user interface with a hierarchical structure, but not a graphical design approach to the Net. Any enticing graphics you see on the Web are the result of GIF or JPEG files, along with some clever uses of the various tags that have emerged in later versions of the HTML standards.
Now, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is working on Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), which could change all that. CSS is not part of the planned HTML 3.2, but Microsoft, among others, is working diligently with W3C to make sure it makes it into a subsequent release and becomes a standard for all Web browsers.
CSS represents a new way to describe how Web pages should be designed. The styles embedded in a Web page will be readable by the browser, which will lay out the page as specified by the stylesheet. For example, a stylesheet could contain a command to format head-level 3, the tag for which is <H3>-as Times Roman Bold Italic in 18 points, or to format paragraphs (containing the <P> tag) as 10-point Helvetica, with a left and right margin of a half an inch.
The features that stylesheets will bring to Web pages will include:
With CSS, the graphics that currently take forever to load on a Web page will be part of the HTML and load instantly. Incidentally, they're called "cascading" stylesheets because of the linking capability. You can attach a stylesheet to a document which in turn can pass its values on to other stylesheets (although you also can define a stationary, constant stylesheet to override one at a higher level).
Cascading Stylesheets currently are built into only the Microsoft Internet Explorer. However, if the W3C does, in fact, adopt CSS as a standard, all browsers ultimately will support it. As an intranet manager, though, you can mandate the browser used in your organization to take advantage of CSS if the creation of a signature Web site and the other advantages CSS brings are of value to you and your organization.
Microsoft, it seems, is bent on taking over the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the intranet market. To some, that seems a horrifying thought. After all, Microsoft was a Johnny-come-lately to the world of the Net. Why should they be able to simply assume control of it?
The answer may be the quality and inventiveness of the applications the company brings to the Net-and to intranets. As management guru Peter Drucker noted in a recent interview, "There has been no case in history where the pioneer became the dominant producer, whether you are talking about a business or a science; the most successful innovators are the creative imitators, the Number Two." As far as the Internet and the intranet are concerned, Number Two may well be Microsoft.
I make this broad statement based on the work Microsoft is doing on its Internet Explorer 4.0. This next-generation version of its freeware Web browser will be more, in fact, than just a Web browser. It will be a replacement for the Windows 95 desktop. The desktop image will be HTML. Whether you are browsing for documents on your hard drive, information on the intranet, or pages on the World Wide Web, the process will be invisible, seamless.
Thus, a company's customized treatment of the Windows 95 desktop could become the intranet home page. Additionally, the desktop themes introduced with Windows 95 will be downloadable from Web sites, so you can adopt the look of a favorite site, turning your icons and wallpaper into a representation of the themes associated with the site. Companies could customize the desktop to adopt a company theme, or departmental themes.
Equally intriguing is the notion that the next version of Microsoft Office also will be integrated into the network environment. You will, for example, be able to create hyperlinks throughout Office documents to any URL including HTML-based documents on the intranet as well as other Office documents stored within the intranet network. The suite's search engine will search across multiple servers to locate any Office or HTML files. Finally, Office 97 will incorporate Microsoft Outlook, replacing existing features to handle scheduling and calendars, e-mail, contacts, documents, and files. The new desktop information manager will work with information on the hard drive as well as that contained across intranet networks.
Undoubtedly, competitors to Microsoft will emerge with equally useful advances, but organizations that already have significant investments in Microsoft technology will be able to leverage those investments to enhance the power of their intranets.
Many of the issues facing organizations considering intranets are, in fact, opportunities rather than stumbling blocks. Intranets can be made to interface with legacy systems, including mainframes; they can incorporate existing documents without somebody re-formatting those documents one-by-one into HTML; they can be combined with existing groupware products to create intranets that take advantage of multiple technologies.
And the future holds exciting possibilities for the intranet and the value it can bring to an organization. As long as the intranet is designed strategically based on the organization's bottom-line needs, the intranet can embrace new communication models and represent the foundation of new and stronger organizational cultures, enhanced competitiveness, and increased collaboration.
The information age is based on information and knowledge replacing land, labor, and capital as the key factors of production. Those with information-and the ability to access it quickly and use it strategically- will be on the winning side. The intranet creates the integrated information infrastructure that enables all employees to take advantage of all the information the organization has, and then some.
I can't wait to see what they look like in five years.