By Alan Gahtan - Home Page: http://gahtan.com/alan/ - January 15, 1996
What's an Intranet? It is the term used to refer to an Internet-like system, incorporating World Wide Web technology, which is implemented internally by an organization. The technology is used to connect employees to each other and to internal resources rather than to external sites.
Intranets are an exciting new phenomenon taking place on corporate networks. Twenty percent of the Fortune 1000 companies have already launched Web-based Intranet applications. While the media has closely watched and reported on the incredible growth of the Internet, the use of the same technology on corporate networks to share information and improve staff productivity has been less publicized.
Many companies currently use E-Mail as the primary vehicle to distribute information. However, e-mail is a "push" technology whereas many of the types of information distributed internally should more appropriately be "pulled" by staff as required. Publishing information on an internal Web server can be a more cost effective way of distributing such information than continually upgrading the e-mail system to support the increasing demands being placed upon it. Web servers can also be connected to, and serve as a front-end to, internal databases.
One well-known company with a major Intranet initiative is Xerox Corporation. Its internal Web site, called the Xerox WebBoard, is currently accessible to more than 15,000 Xerox employees and plans call for an increase in that number to over 50,000 workers by the end of 1996. Employees can access postings of daily company and market news, phone directories, links to other Xerox home pages and Internet sites of potential interest. The system will be enhanced in early 1996 to include chat systems and video-enabled bulletin boards.
Hewlett Packard has moved even faster. On April 28, 1995, nearly 100,000 of its employees turned on their computers and saw a brand-new icon on their screen - Netscape's Web browser which provided access to their new Intranet. This US$24 billion company is using its Intranet to replace its own proprietary document management system.
Groupware products such as Lotus Notes, Novell's Groupwise and Microsoft's yet-to-be- released Exchange Server currently still provide some advantages not available from an Intranet. However, Web server products are increasingly threatening to steal the thunder from groupware products as they are further enhanced with features such as discussion databases. Intranets can often be implemented less expensively and more easily than these existing groupware products.
Web technology can also be implemented along side with Lotus Notes to leverage a firm's investment in Notes. An add-on to Notes called InterNotes Web Publisher can make a Notes server act as a Web server. In this configuration, Notes is used as the publishing tool, while access to the data is provided using less expensive Web browsers.
Intranets are constructed using unmodified Internet Web servers and off-the-shelf Web browsers, such as Netscape's Navigator, Microsoft's Internet Explorer or one of Spyglass Corp.'s more than 45 licensees of Mosaic. Web servers are available from a wide variety of vendors and can be operated on an assortment of different server platforms including Unix, Macintosh and the many flavours of Windows. A number of vendors, soon to include Novell, also produce an NLM version which can operate as an additional process on an existing Novell file server. Novell's Netware operating system is the most popular file server operating system used in law firms.
Hypertext links, the most fundamental web technology, allows users to easily navigate and find information by simply clicking on a word or graphic. Furthermore, as law firms begin to install Internet gateways, the web browser can be used as a single front-end to access both internal and external resources.
Law Firm related applications for this new technology can include distributing new court decisions, notices of new library acquisitions, providing access to lawyer biographies, telephone directories, employee manuals and practice group descriptions and news. Community newsgroups can provide a forum for discussion among people with shared interests or to solicit help from other practice areas. An Intranet could even be used to develop a substantive law expert system accessible from the entire firm.
Law firm MIS managers and lawyers with legal technology responsibilities should keep an eye on this new technology. A number of computer industry visionaries are now talking of the Internet and of internal Intranets as the next important platform for computing. They see the Web as having the potential to evolve into the desktop operating environment of the future.
Web technology provides clean and intuitive access to a wide variety of media types, including audio and video, while providing a more versatile and friendly user interface than that found on most corporate and law firm systems. A final advantage to implementing a web-based system to manage internal law firm information is that relevant portions of the information can then be easily published on the firm's Internet home page.
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