The Intranet provides a common ground, namely HTML, for stitiching together work in a single interface format. Where it once required extensive programming to integrate separate pieces of information into a single presentation, the Web is inherently integrated. Ergo, proprietary platforms must go away. Given an option between uniformity and platform diversity, users won't put up with the more complicated system. The intranet is the option.
Intranets act as windows to old legacy computer applications, as well as contemporary solutions.
But users only see the surface, they do not see the complexity of integration going on behind the scenes. Shall Belong to the Users U sers refuse to be held hostage by technologists and technology interests. If you are intimately acquainted with the minutiae of information technology, this makes perfect sense. If you are one of the millions who is concerned less with the how of computing than the what, it doesn't. All of this should be transparent to the user.