5.7: Intranet, Extranet, and Cloud

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Intranet

An intranet, as the name implies, provides web-based resources for the users within an organization. These web pages are not accessible to those outside the company. The pages typically contain information useful to employees such as policies and procedures. In an academic setting the intranet provides an interface to learning resources for students.

Extranet

Sometimes an organization wants to be able to collaborate with its customers or suppliers while at the same time maintaining the security of being inside its own network. In cases like this a company may want to create an extranet, which is a part of a company’s network that can be made available securely to those outside of the company. Extranets can be used to allow customers to log in and place orders, or for suppliers to check their customers’ inventory levels.

Sometimes an organization will need to allow someone who is not located physically within its internal network to gain secure access to the intranet. This access can be provided by a virtual private network (VPN). VPNs will be discussed further in Chapter 6 which focuses on Information Security).

Sidebar: Microsoft’s SharePoint Powers the Intranet

As organizations begin to see the power of collaboration between their employees, they often look for solutions that will allow them to leverage their intranet to enable more collaboration. Since most companies use Microsoft products for much of their computing, some are using Microsoft’s SharePoint to support employee collaboration.

SharePoint provides a communication and collaboration platform that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft’s Office suite of applications. Using SharePoint, employees can share a document and edit it together, avoiding the need to email the document for others to review. Projects and documents can be managed collaboratively across the organization. Corporate documents are indexed and made available for search.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing was covered in Chapter 3. The universal availability of the Internet combined with increases in processing power and data-storage capacity have made cloud computing a viable option for many companies. Using cloud computing, companies or individuals can contract to store data on storage devices somewhere on the Internet. Applications can be “rented” as needed, giving a company the ability to quickly deploy new applications. The I.T. department benefits from not having to maintain software that is provided on the cloud.

Sidebar: Metcalfe’s Law

Just as Moore’s Law describes how computing power is increasing over time, Metcalfe’s Law describes the power of networking. Metcalfe’s Law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system, or N². If a network has 10 nodes, the inherent value is 100, or 10².

Metcalfe’s Law is attributed to Robert Metcalfe, the co-inventor of Ethernet. It attempts to address the added value provided by each node on the network. Think about it this way: If none of your friends were on Instagram, would you spend much time there? If no one else at your school or place of work had e-mail, would it be very useful to you? Metcalfe’s Law tries to quantify this value.