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  • June 26, 2000 at 3:05 am #2075414

    IT Debate: Avoid chaos on your intranet

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    by itdebate · about 24 years, 7 months ago

    Many businesses are just beginning to realize the benefits of developing an intranet. Its newness, combined with its extraordinary usefulness, have placed demands on the technology and those charged with maintaining and developing it. What steps is your enterprise taking to develop and organize its intranet? For what purposes do you use your intranet? What do you want your intranet to be “when it grows up”? You can read the related Gartner article, which will be posted on 3:00 A.M. Wednesday, at http://www.techrepublic.com/article.jhtml?id=r00620000628kia01.htm.

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    • June 27, 2000 at 10:08 pm #3782576

      IT Debate: Avoid chaos on your intranet

      by cooger · about 24 years, 7 months ago

      In reply to IT Debate: Avoid chaos on your intranet

      I have met cases where CEOs have pushed for intranets just for the sake of having one, with the result that bad planning (or lack of it) caused the intranet to either die out or become an unmanageable beast.

      Intranets need to be planned out and taken seriously. Consideration needs to be made of what information is to be held there, who the users are, what they can use the intranet for & many other issues that focus on buildnig an infrastructure today that can be further enhanced tomorrow. Throughout all this thought and development process, other more subtle issues need to be considered, such as confidentiality of information, secrecy, suitability to the audience etc…

      An intranet is no more a ‘web page on the LAN’. It is more of a mix of groupware, ‘internal’ e-commerce, workflow facilitation and a tool to give certain outsiders a peek at inside. It is a facilitating technology that, when based on CRM, both within and without the organisation, can provide many fruits to reap.

    • June 28, 2000 at 4:19 am #3783510

      IT Debate: Avoid chaos on your intranet

      by eclose0923 · about 24 years, 7 months ago

      In reply to IT Debate: Avoid chaos on your intranet

      I’ve had the *pleasure* of working with a company whose management is technically illiterate and yet wants to promote a tech-savvy image. Management involvement is critical to the successful implementation of an intranet. In my experience it’s beenthe responsibility of the IT department to bring management up to speed on the technical issues in a way they can understand. Getting them to understand what they are asking for can be one of the greatest challenges.

    • June 28, 2000 at 5:02 am #3783485

      IT Debate: Avoid chaos on your intranet

      by mahinder_chawla · about 24 years, 7 months ago

      In reply to IT Debate: Avoid chaos on your intranet

      I’m a consultant, and in recent years I have seen a spurt in the utilization of intranets by organizations. The last organization I worked for had a team of people responsible for intranet sites they hosted. They were atleast two dozen web sites they used. The most popular were the ones which hosted the company directory and contact information.
      The important thing that was lagging was the discussion group part of it. By this I mean you post an article and the clients or users are allowed tomark their remarks on the site for the author to see. This would have been ideal. But most of the people were yet getting used to the technology before they could start using advanced features of intranet.
      Interestingly young workforce specifically age groups 25-35 were the most aggressive users of intranet as a interactive tool. where as people in the age group 35-45 used it for referal only. Only an observation … thought it might help

    • June 28, 2000 at 6:57 pm #3783273

      IT Debate: Avoid chaos on your intranet

      by plantogo2000 · about 24 years, 7 months ago

      In reply to IT Debate: Avoid chaos on your intranet

      I do think this transition will go as smoothly as Microsoft plans. This is a merger of products and one is easier to support than two. In fact, this strategy is consistent with Microsoft and while it may be a surprise to everyone else who is skeptical, preventing a surprise and reducing costs to boot is a much sought after business strategy.
      I do think the transition will improve system performance for business users because Microsoft is determined to make this work and will use this product merger to solidify their hold on the past, present and future. Their stake in the future depends on this product merger.
      One other point is the Intel and Microsoft technical team of products that keeps merging the architecture and providing bothcompanies with a winning strategy.
      Notice how quiet it has become after the trial and how those things that have happened have been in Microsoft’s corner while everyone else is “bewildered” and not so confident.

    • June 29, 2000 at 1:32 am #3783226

      IT Debate: Avoid chaos on your intranet

      by mike richling · about 24 years, 7 months ago

      In reply to IT Debate: Avoid chaos on your intranet

      The competency of an organization IT management practice can be judged by the quality of its Intranet. As outlined in the article, Wild West systems indicate a state of ‘No Control’ and generally it will identify either a weak IT management strategyor the pre-existence of a strong decentralized IT structure.

      Those who believe that this Wild West can be reined in are living a simplistic life of a larva. At the same time those who believe that demanding standards such as logo size and font type will help are no more advanced than the larva types.

      Intranet policies must be made clear.
       All information must have an identifiable owner, anyone who creates the information should be identified as the owner and then have the responsibility of maintaining it,
       there should be no duplication of information – instead encourage hot links,
       Provide an online (graphical if necessary) description of the Intranet structure so that users can determine where they are permitted to

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