7/24: Intranets, Extranets & Enterprise Collaboration

• What is an intranet? – An internal Internet

• What is an extranet? – An intranet accessible to

customers, suppliers, and/or business partners

• Applications of intranets– Communications & collaboration– Business operations & management

Intranet Technology Resources

– Web browsers & servers– Search engines– Network management software– Database servers– Mail & news servers

Business Value of Intranets

• Cost savings– Publishing, mailing, distribution costs– Training & development costs

• Increased productivity & quality– Speed, access to information for

decision making

• Increased morale & employee involvement

Extranets

• Intranet accessible to customers, suppliers, or business partners

• Could be on a virtual private network (VPN)

• Facilitate interaction to speed processes between partners

The Future of Intra/Extranets

• Currently (majority): information publishing apps

• Future: inquiry-based systems (database apps) and transaction processing systems – i.e. GE Information Services

Small Groups: Cases

Answer the questions at the end of the case:

• US West Communications (pg. 351)

• Nu Skin International (pg. 369)

• Reliance Group Holdings (pg. 395)

• Knight-Ridder Publishing (pg. 396)

• Amoco Chemical (pg. 397)

Enterprise Collaboration Systems

• Designed to help employees & partners to:– Communicate: share information– Coordinate: using resources,

planning– Collaborate: working together

cooperatively

• Definition: an information system designed to support all the above.

Teams

• Team: two or more people collaborating on the same project or task.– Formal or informal– Virtual team

• A temporary team united by a task, not by organization.

Tools for ECS: Groupware

• Groupware– Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, etc.– Support collaboration through email, discussion

forums, calendaring, etc.– MS Office, Lotus SmartSuite, & Corel WordPerfect

Office are adding groupware elements

Tools for ECS: Other• Email

– Used more frequently for document transfer

• Internet phone & fax– Low cost, universal access

• Web publishing– Collaboration– Information broadcast

ECS: Electronic Conferencing Tools

• Data & Voice Conferencing– Whiteboarding– Microsoft NetMeeting, Netscape Conference

• Videoconferencing– Desktop teleconferencing– Teleconferencing

• Discussion Forums– Bulletin Board Systems (BBS)

• Chat Systems• Electronic Meeting Systems

ECS: Collaborative Work Mgt. Tools

• Calendaring & Scheduling– Netscape Calendar, GroupWise, MS Exchange

• Project Management

• Workflow Systems– Inc. document image management– Lotus Notes, GroupWise, MS

Exchange

• Knowledge Management– Knowledge databases, repositories