Intranet Overview

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Intranet

Intranet is defined as private network of computers within an organization with its own server and firewall. Moreover we can define Intranet as:

• Intranet is system in which multiple PCs are networked to be connected to each other. PCs in intranet are not available to the world outside of the intranet.

• Usually each company or organization has their own Intranet network and members/employees of that company can access the computers in their intranet.

• Every computer in internet is identified by a unique IP address.

• Each computer in Intranet is also identified by a IP Address, which is unique among the computers in that Intranet.

Benefits

Intranet is very efficient and reliable network system for any organization. It is beneficial in every aspect such as collaboration, cost-effectiveness, security, productivity and much more.

Communication

Intranet offers easy and cheap communication within an organization. Employees can communicate using chat, e-mail or blogs.

Time Saving

Information on Intranet is shared in real time.

Collaboration

Information is distributed among the employees as according to requirement and it can be accessed by the authorized users, resulting in enhanced teamwork.

Platform Independency

Intranet can connect computers and other devices with different architecture.

Cost Effective

Employees can see the data and other documents using browser rather than printing them and distributing duplicate copies among the employees, which certainly decreases the cost.

Workforce Productivity

Data is available at every time and can be accessed using company workstation. This helps the employees work faster.

Business Management

It is also possible to deploy applications that support business operations.

Security

Since information shared on intranet can only be accessed within an organization, therefore there is almost no chance of being theft.

Specific Users

Intranet targets only specific users within an organization therefore, once can exactly know whom he is interacting.

Immediate Updates

Any changes made to information are reflected immediately to all the users.

Issues

Apart from several benefits of Intranet, there also exist some issues.. These issues are shown in the following diagram:

Applications

Intranet applications are same as that of Internet applications. Intranet applications are also accessed through a web browser. The only difference is that, Intranet applications reside on local server while Internet applications reside on remote server. Here, we've discussed some of these applications:

Document publication applications

Document publication applications allow publishing documents such as manuals, software guide, employee profits etc without use of paper.

Electronic resources applications

It offers electronic resources such as software applications, templates and tools, to be shared across the network.

Interactive Communication applications

Like on internet, we have e-mail and chat like applications for Intranet, hence offering an interactive communication among employees.

Support for Internet Applications

Intranet offers an environment to deploy and test applications before placing them on Internet.

Internet vs. Intranet

Apart from similarities there are some differences between the two. Following are the differences between Internet and Intranet: