Advantages
Demo
See Software Andina Intranet Express in action. We have a full version of the product suite running
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Free Offer
Try Software Andina Intranet Express on your own server. For a limited time, we are offering a fully functional evaluation copy of the Software Andina Intranet Express Basic module for free to qualified companies.
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What is an Intranet?
"Intranet" is one of those technical buzz words that can mean so many things that it looses its meaning.
For some people, an Intranet is synonymous with a company's Local Area Network (LAN). For others it has
a much more specific meaning. For the purposes of this document an Intranet is a set of applications built
using Internet based technologies meant for a company's internal consumption. The Intranet is typically
accessible via the company's Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN).
An Intranet typically provides a thin-client environment. This is a client/server environment where most
of the processing takes place on the server. In this case, the server consists of a web server and
application servers and the client consists of a web browser. The server is responsible for all the database
processing and most of the application logic. The client is responsible for presentation, user input and
simple user input validation.
Advantages of an Intranet
An Intranet's thin client environment provides the following advantages:
- System independent client.
- Ease of deployment.
- Efficient access for remote users.
- Universal access.
These points are discussed in the following sections.
System Independent Client
The client for an Intranet's thin client environment is a standard web browser.
Although there is really no such thing as a standard web browser, the market has produced two
de-facto standard web browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator (now owned by AOL).
Other web browsers do exist, but their market share is negligible and they strive for compatibility
with the de-facto standard browsers.
Although it is possible to design an Intranet to one specific web browser, the more common approach
is to design the Intranet to run with both de-facto standard web browsers. Assuming that the Intranet
was designed for both web browsers, the possible clients for the Intranet are vast. The following list
outlines some of the possible clients:
- Internet Explorer on a Windows platform
- Navigator on a Windows platform
- Internet Explorer on a Mac
- Navigator on a Mac
- Navigator on a Linux platform
- Internet Explorer on a Sun platform
- Navigator on a Sun platform
- Navigator on many other platforms
The main benefit of this flexibility is that it cuts down on the need to have a PC on an employee's
desk simply to access the company's internal applications. A common scenario is an engineer who works
on a Unix box all day. It is typical to see this engineer with both a Unix workstation and a PC on his
desk, one to do his work and the other to access the company's internal applications. If the company's
internal applications were designed as web browser neutral Intranet applications, this would eliminate
the need for having two machines on his desk.
Ease of Deployment
With the advent of the PC and migration away from mainframes and centralized processing, the issue of
application deployment has increasingly become a nightmare for the IS department. In the mainframe days,
an application was installed once on the mainframe and all users accessed the application via dumb
terminals. These "green screen" applications lacked a Graphical User Interface because they were limited
by the capabilities of the dumb terminal. However, from a deployment point of view, it was very easy. The
IS department installed the application on the mainframe and all users ran the application from the mainframe.
In today's environment with PC LANs, the issue of deployment has become much more complex. A typical
application today consists of executable files (.exe) with a number of dynamic link libraries (.dll)
many of which need to be registered on the machine where they will run. Add to this the set of required
software that must be on the machine prior to installing the application and it becomes clear that a
physical activity must take place on the machine where the application will run. Multiply this out by
the number of applications, the number of machines where the application must be run and the number of
times the applications is updated, and it can become a very time consuming activity. A worst-case scenario
is where someone needs to go around to every machine and install and update every application. A best-case
scenario is to buy or build utilities to try to automate this procedure by doing an update of the client
machine over the network. Even with a best-case scenario, problems may arise because each client machine
may have a slightly different configuration and an update over the network may not be practical for users
who are remote or on the road and using a low speed connection.
An Intranet is a return to the centralized management of the mainframe days. The web server and the
application servers are centrally managed. The application is installed in one location and each user
uses a web browser to run the application from its installed location. Any updates to the Intranet
application are done centrally and are immediately visible to all users.
An Intranet application tries to provide the best of both worlds. Providing a centrally installed
and managed environment like a mainframe application, while still utilizing the power of the client
machine to provide an intuitive, graphical and media rich environment like a PC application.
Efficient access for remote users
Ever since its inception, the World Wide Web has been designed to be efficient for low speed
connections. This is due to the number of people who access the Web via relatively low speed
dialup connections.
Because of the fact that Intranets are built using Internet technologies, a well-designed Intranet
can be very efficient for remote or dialup users who are connected via a low speed connection.
With its thin client environment, all database and application processing are done on high-speed
servers. What is sent back to the client is simple text based HTML with binary graphics. The relative
speed of an Intranet application to a remote user is typically based on the number of graphic images
that comprise the web page (which require longer download times) rather than the size of the database
or the number of records processed.
Universal Access
An Intranet is simply a set of applications that use Internet technologies that are meant for internal
consumption. If a company is permanently connected to the Internet it can be very easy to make its
Intranet available to the Internet. This would open up the company's Intranet to the world, which would
require extra attention to security to avoid unauthorized access. However doing so would open up many
avenues for an employee to have access to the Intranet. Anywhere an employee has access to the Internet,
he would also have access to the company's Intranet as in the following examples:
- An employee is at home connected to the Internet via a high-speed cable modem hookup.
- An employee is at a customer site and the customer is connected to the Internet.
- An employee is on the road and wants to use a local ISP number to connect to the Internet rather than a long distance number to dial into the company's LAN.
- An employee is on vacation in a third world country and walks into a Cyber Café.
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