#1 – All about intranet

Intranet…

Internet…

Nope, I did not misspelled Internet as Intranet. Rather, intranet has been defined by Wikipedia as “a computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to securely share any part of an organization’s information or network operating system within that organization”. Intra, a greek word for within, is a network that is confined within the organization.

On the other hand, the Internet is defined as, “a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide.”

From the two definitions above, the main difference between the two is that sharing of information is limited to a certain group of people as compared to the mass for the Internet. As such, the intranet is a great way of protecting privacy for organizations. With intranet, information sharing and collaboration in an organization can be improved.

Today, many enterprises set up an intranet to facilitate communication which each other regardless of the size of the company. One of the commonly used in organizations is SharePoint, which is a web application developed by Microsoft. The 2 videos below will give you an explanation on how SharePoint works.

As mentioned from both video, the intranet also acts as a place to connect among the employees, aside from a place to provide and store information for the organization. Features of social networking are now integrated in the intranet. According to Intranetblog, Social media tools on the corporate intranet has became popular in 2009, thus creating the term social intranet. Also with social media tools as an added feature, the intranet has been upgraded to intranet 2.0. A short video below will provide a general idea of how intranet 2.0 works.

Just like the Internet, the Intranet has evolved over the years from merely a place to store and share documents to one that allow and facilitates discussion, collaboration and association among employees. It is amazing how technology, specifically internet is constantly changing. So how much more do you know about the intranet now? What other aspect of the Internet do you observe a change in? 🙂

Hiatus no more!

Back from hiatus! This blog will be used once again for a communication class. All entries from January 2012 onwards are specially created for a class on Introduction to the Internet (COM125). Comments are appreciated! 🙂