To hear some people talk, intranets are the corporate computing platform today. But what should reasonable people really be working toward with intranets and what applications will never be intranet-appropriate? What's the biggest mistake people are making when it comes to intranets?

Nolle: Not knowing what one is. We've found in surveys that while over 90% of companies have a commitment to intranets, only about 7% really have an idea of what an intranet is, how it would be different from just a corporate information network or an IP network. If you start with an objective view of what an intranet is, there is no application limit to one -any more than there is to any other data network - except cost.

Gibbs: The applications that will never be intranet appropriate are those with heavy and/or complex database demands or where complex functionality, such as dynamic multimedia in a real time environment, is involved.

The goal to work towards is information distribution. The biggest mistake is lack of planning and lack of attention to detail (wherein God is, so I'm told).

Heckart: Intranets are appropriate when information needs to be widely accessible to a number of people and/or when collaboration is desired. This is why networks are built in the first place. What's different about an intranet is it standardizes on a set of plug-and-play, off-the-shelf, networking and programming protocols. The intranet uses Web technologies and interfaces so that it is easy and intuitive to use and navigate.

The two biggest mistakes being made is that many users don't go into the process of building an intranet with a clear understanding of what they hope to achieve, thus they never know whether they did. And, they are building many separate intranets - different intranets for different communities of interest and using different network facilities. This is the way networking was done, so why not intranetworking? Because it diminishes the economies of scale and thus the total savings.

Briere: The biggest mistake that people make with intranets is assuming that they are missing out on something. These are nothing new, just renamed internal networks. What is new is a new generation of standards-based options for addressing intranets, and the fact that the more distributed economy is putting this on the front burner.

It's too big a job to try to answer what applications don't belong on intranets. But I will say that a good manager should define intranet very generally as almost any information that needs to be shared internally - whether hardcopy, fax, electronic, voice, video, whatever - and start prioritizing the benefits that would be gotten the soonest and with the biggest bang for the buck to start migrating to an internal information backbone or intranet.

Kearns: An intranet is a good way to reduce the use of paper while delivering data in a more timely manner. The best uses so far are distribution of HR, PR and marketing information, forms automation, such as expense reports and vacation requests, and project management, where you can combine typical timeline information with a data repository. Data entry (telemarketing, accounting, etc.) apps aren't yet ready for the intranet, though.

The biggest mistake people make with intranets is abysmal design. The intranet has to attract users in much the same way an Internet site does. This requires paying close attention to design issues as well as Quality of Service.

Bradner: Another case of pundits seizing on something as a common answer without considering the actual needs. Intranets, and by that most people seem to mean Web-based services, is a rather common answer these days. I think that within a very few years TCP/IP will be *the* network protocol in almost all corporate networks, with only legacy SNA as an alternative. But I'm not that sure we know what the application set will be. Clearly the Web will be a big player but I expect to see others also, most unknown as of now. One can force-fit heavy data entry applications into Web- and Java-based systems but for many of these application-specific software on the desktop seems to be a far better idea.

One big mistake that I keep seeing is to place people in charge of the corporate intranet whose training and expertise are in IBM SNA networks. The TCP/IP clue density is more than a bit low and there is little language in common between these people and people who actually understand TCP/IP networking.

Go to the next topic...