Inside the Intranet - expanding your computer possibilities.

• Author: Swagel, Will

Like the Internet, The Intranet is another way to get the most for your computer dollars.

Worker A needs to communicate with worker B and worker C. A wants B to look over some marketing information and scan some distribution data which seems significant. A wants C to study the distribution data carefully and scan the marketing. B is tied up on the phone and C is at a meeting.

So worker A sends both B and C an e-mail with attached documents for them to look at as soon as they are free. A also copies the same message to supervisor Z, in lieu of a meeting. Z sends the message more than a thousand miles to analyst X at headquarters, who adds the message to a growing database being "mined" for valuable patterns of information. At no point during these nearly instantaneous transactions does a piece of paper change hands. And all this is done as easily as navigating the World Wide Web.

Welcome to the Intranet

Most Americans have been sufficiently pounded by newspapers and TV to understand what the In-ter-net and the World Wide Web are and do. Born of the linking of university, military and scientific computers in the 1960s, the computer network we now call the Internet connects millions of computers all over the world in a widely-accessible, largely unregulated network.

In-tra-net technology is the linking of a closed group, say, the employees of a company. Intranet technology is being used in most large corporations and many smaller businesses. Their Intranet systems look and operate much the same as the Internet, complete with Web pages and search engines. But this network is only for a specified group.

Between the MAPCO Alaska Petroleum Inc. computers in North Pole and other MAPCO facilities in Tulsa, Nashville and Memphis, for example, information flows freely and securely. That's because between those MAPCO computers and an outside computer sits a security device known as a "firewall."

The firewall keeps unauthorized computers out of a particular Intranet. Other software and hardware solutions are being put to the task of providing Intranet security, one of the thorniest and most important problems now being addressed.

The next step is, of course, extending a company's Intranet to include suppliers and ultimately customers. Many vendors and service companies, especially the largest ones, already do some of their commerce electronically. When consumers as a whole are included, electronic commerce will truly be here.

"The Intranet is evolutionary - nobody knows where the heck it is going to go," says Gordon Bailey, MAPCO Alaska's information manager. "The Intranet's only limited by your...