The cost angle is perhaps a foreshadowing, and intranets' ongoing cost and justification in new business is coming to your budget meetings. Reducing costs isn't a primary driver for intranets, but it concerns those who have them. While many CEOs and CIOs have sent out a search party to find a viable return on investment for their public Web sites, intranets pay for themselves. Security is a mainstay of Internet and intranet concerns, but organizations' hot spots change as experience with intranets grows. In comparison, experienced intranet builders were more concerned with the potential damage to the network, potential for intellect ual property to be stolen, and unauthorized access from within the organization than were the inexperienced.
Intranets are increasingly external to the organization.
Twenty-seven percent of the current and future adopters said they would allow external third parties to access their intranets, most often naming their customers, followed by their suppliers and consultants, as those third parties. IS architects networks in front of and behind the firewalls. They are rapidly becoming the preferred method for business beyond those walls. By the time you read this column, many of the questions racing through my mind probably will have been answered, but I'm guessing the answers will not be satisfactory. I am writing this on Tuesday, September 11, the day we, as American citizens, lost our innocence.