- Intraweb
"If you are looking for the web application toolkit, see
IntraWeb VCL "An intraweb is a web comprising all
HTTP nodes on anintranet ; synonyms are corporate web, internal web.Corporate internal web
Intranet s are networks used internally in organizations to facilitate communication and access to corporate information.Internet protocol suite and tools buildintranet s and especially the Webapplication layer to provide organisations with integrated and unified interfaces to corporate 'legacy' data and information systems.Very often the term intranet refers only to the most visible service i.e. the internal
website s. In fact for a large portion, intranets are solely relying onWorld Wide Web software. More than just a play on the word 'Internet ', the word intranet was formed from the prefix intra-, meaning "inside, within", plus net, an abbreviation of 'network'. Likewise, 'intraweb' is formed from the prefix intra- plus web and thus refers to web sites that are only accessible to people within a specific group, organization or community. Nowadays, most large companies have intrawebs as part of their internal information system.ecurity and privacy aspects
Being built on the same technology,
intranet s can offer similar services within an organisation to those provided by theInternet outside it but: (1) they are not necessarily connected to theInternet and (2) their services can tap into internal organisation resources.With the advent ofmobile computing , the notion of internal versus external network is no longer physical;intranet s andextranet s often make use ofVirtual private network s (VPN). The main reason for the separation between intranets and theInternet is to preserve the confidentiality and security of the corporate information system. These mini-Internets are owned and managed by companies and enable these corporations to share their resources with their employees without confidential information being made available on the publicInternet .Web site s running on anintranet look and act just like any otherWeb site s, but thefirewall surrounding the intranet prevents any unauthorized access thus creating a private web.In aB2B context a company might grant limited access to itsintranet to other companies; this is known as an "extranet ".Intranet s,extranet s andInternet are realms of security created for dedicated cooperation and ordered by openness. More generally, access restrictions are of three kinds: from the outside to the inside (throughfirewalls andVPN ), from the inside to the inside (user profiles and access levels), from the inside to the outside (e.g. web filtering).Knowledge management and computer-supported cooperative work
Many companies maintain such mini private Webs that contain information only of use to their employees: organisational structure, corporate templates, Human resources forms, forms, directory, agendas, news, policies, rules, regulations, help files, project descriptions, expert annuary, partnerships with external companies, law information, etc. Intrawebs offer a safe place for employees to publish information that improves workflow but also online interfaces with corporate 'legacy' data, information systems and shared applications.In fact intrawebs are becoming a privileged means for
knowledge management to acquire, facilitate the access, share, and reuse knowledge in order to foster creation of new knowledge and organisational learning.As they grow, many intrawebs need a search facility that allows users to find specific information more easily.Finally, we mentioned that intrawebs were used to limit access to the web (e.g. web filtering) but inversely they can be used to facilitate it. The organization which sets up anintranet is a community and may host many sub-communities of interest that can maintain collective directories, shared bookmark repositories, etc. Thus anintranet is not necessarily only an internal portal to internal resources, it can also provide efficient and focused portals to the world "wide" web.Economies of scale both in financial and cognitive terms
Reliance on cheap or free software enabled Intranets to conquer corporate computing. Most internal networks use
Internet protocols and therefore the same technology stack can be used above. Relying on technologies developed for theInternet , internal company networks benefit from widely-used and supported techniques that are simple and inexpensive to build and maintain compared to proprietary solutions. The same concepts and technologies of theInternet , such as clients and servers running on theInternet protocol suite, build anintranet . In addition to an economy of scale in terms of building, deployment and maintenance costs, one can also recognize an economy of scale in terms of cognitive workload: reusing the same technologies and tools as theWorld Wide Web to build an organization-wide web of internal documents makes it familiar and easier both for developers and users. The same server technologies distribute information, the same browser clients are use to access it, corporate information and application present the same uniformhypertext interface.Web applications for the company and corporate applications on the web
Historically, many evolutions of the
world wide web have been adopted and used in internal webs. Just like the web evolved from a text-based system to a web of multimedia and online services, intrawebs now include multimedia resources and, for instance, corporate forms moved from online static copies to dynamic front-ends ofweb applications directly linked to the corporate information system. Even latest web tools meet application scenarios on corporate webs:wiki s can be used to edit and maintain corporate documents and directories in a very simple way,blog s can be used for news and technological watch,web service s are being used to allow enterprise application integration and workflow management,semantic web frameworks are used for information and data integration and exchanges for instance to materialize corporate memories as corporate semantic webs, etc.Intrawebs are webs dedicated to the community of a corporation. Being on a private network of the company, intrawebs can include a whole family of applications that could not be made available on the public web for confidentiality reasons: corporate applications. The corporation is an existing community that needs to set up and maintain collaboration to attain professional objectives. Web technologies propose shared application supporting communities of practice, of interest, and more generally speaking,knowledge management . They can support collaborations: synchronous communication, expert matching, internal FAQ, collaborative document edition, case-based memories, project management, workflows, etc. Within a company the existence of such community and of its shared professional interests makes the intraweb a selected place to develop and experiment new web-based solutions.Historically there has always been a synergy between world-wide web evolutions and intra-webs experiments. Many evolutions of the world-wide web have been adopted and used in internal webs and, vice-versa, many local initiatives on intrawebs turned out to be seeds of new web applications.Other Uses
This word has also been adapted into a slang term used by gamers and forum users. However, by their sense of the word it is used to mean the public
World Wide Web .ee also
*
intranet
*extranet
*web portal
*IntraWeb VCL : Web application framework.
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.