Intranet and Extranet

Reduced costs and increased productivity are just two of the many benefits that can be offered by intranet, extranet and portal developments. Becons Team have the experience to implement such a solution. From initial scoping through development, deployment and training, we can call on our expertise and past experiences to produce a solution that delivers results.

Intranet / Extranet / Internet ?

People are often confused by the difference between an intranet, an extranet and the Internet. Although there is a great deal of cross over between all three, in the broadest terms each can be described as follows:

An Intranet is…

A private network within an organisation to facilitate communication and access to information using Internet based technologies. Accessible only to computers linked directly to the network.

The Internet is…

A global communications network consisting of thousands of interconnected networks.

An Extranet is…

A private external network. Accessible to any locally or remotely networked computer. An extranet will require a username / password.

PRIVATE PUBLIC
INTERNAL Intranet
EXTERNAL Extranet Internet

In essence, as this chart shows, the only two factors that differentiate the three are whether access is public or private and whether access is through an internal network or available externally via the Internet.

Benefits of an Intranet
An Intranet can help a company or organisation to:

       . Enable collaboration
       . Expand sales
       . Reduce and avoid costs
       . Save time
       . Improve productivity
       . Improve customer support
       . Improve efficiency
       . Increase information accessibility
       . Improve communication

Intranets should help employees collaborate on business processes such as product development or order fulfilment, both reducing costs and increasing value for a company and its customers. Specifically, intranets centralize elements of the business process in an easily accessible, platform-independent virtual space. Successful intranets allow employees from a variety of departments to contribute the different skills necessary to carry out a particular process.

While each department of a company may have its own virtual space, intranets should be organized primarily around the business processes they help employees carry out, rather than the organizational chart of the company.

Microsoft Sharepoint

SharePoint is an intranet solution developed by Microsoft which offers powerful integration, collaboration, and customization capabilities to help connect people, teams, and knowledge. The team at Becons having been developing both bespoke and SharePoint based intranet solutions for a number of years now. For more information on how an intranet can help you please contact us.

Benefits of an Extranet

An extranet enables access to your applications and information via a secure distributed channel. Users can login from any internet connected computer in the world.

An extranet allows you to target suppliers and customers with precise and specific information at a dramatically lower price than traditional channels.

Further Information
Read more information on the benefits of Microsoft SharePoint