Original Page[1] in SunNews On-line
Spinning the internal Web
As corporations discover the savings in internal Web sites, they are
also discovering the need for careful planning.
By Barry D. Bowen and Carolyn W.C. Wong
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Abstract
The lasting impact of today's frenzied commercial Web site
development remains to be seen, but there is another side to the
Web -- more sober, more practical, and less flashy. Businesses
large and small are using Web technology to streamline internal
corporate processes and communication. The so called intranet is
getting down to business. Plus a sidebar[2] with tips for
preventing intranet chaos. (3,000 words)
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I n the near future, employees at Motorola Corp. will be able to access
the human resources department's internal Web site and go online to
change deductions on their paychecks or the amount of their retirement
contributions. It's a move that will save employees time and also save
Motorola the money it would spend producing and administering paper
documents. Organizations like Motorola are discovering the joys of
intranets -- as platforms for groupware, or as a means of quickly making
available everything from internal job openings to training schedules --
anything that is expensive to print out and distribute. intranets enable
companies or departments to distribute data across multiple platforms
through one Web browser. Only one interface is required whether
employees use Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOS, or Unix.
"I'm seeing about a ten-to-one ratio of internal Web servers to public
Web servers," said Mike Bauer, director of technology planning services
for EDS's (Dallas, TX) client/server group. "People are now considering
Web applications for everything from publishing to data warehouse
front-ends."
"The amazing thing about intranets is the rate of adoption. People woke
up one morning and found all the pieces in front of them," said Paul
Callahan, director of Forrester Research's Network Strategy Service and
author of the report, "The intranet."
The December 1995 Forrester report concluded that the intranet
phenomenon can be characterized by one word, "speed." Internal Web
deployments have gone from nowhere to production release in less than 12
months. Twenty-two percent of Fortune 500 companies polled said they
have already set up internal Web servers, and another 40 percent said
they are seriously considering using Web technology internally.
Internal Web sites are quick and easy to develop and promote better
intracompany communication, Callahan said. Plus, users believe they are
easier and cheaper to develop than Lotus Notes or traditional
client/server applications, he said.
Most existing internal Web applications are fairly straight-forward
publishing efforts that emphasize one-way communication from a
department or corporate office out to the employees. But simple does not
mean low-value, Callahan said.
"Don't underestimate the impact of simple applications. When
applications are simple and straight-forward, they can be really big
wins," he said. "They don't take much effort to put up and they often
address fundamental business requirements."
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Technology plays catch up
As companies scramble to make more and more information available to
employees online, the complications and limitations of such an involved
enterprisewide endeavor soon become apparent. (See sidebar, Preventing
intranet chaos[13] .) For the time being, companies at the forefront of
internal Web development are facing some technical challenges. The lack
of easy-to-use database and document search tools being the most obvious
of these problems. Companies are often forced to sacrifice valuable
resources building these tools.
John Swartzendruber, technical manager of the Internet Services Group at
pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. in Indianapolis, said 2,000 to
2,500 employees were wired to the company's intranet last October. The
figure rose to 8,000 by the end of February. He expects this number to
increase to 16,000 by the end of this year. Swartzendruber said his
group needs strong authoring tools and is seeking commercial solutions
for indexing document sets on the internal Web. Server administration
and utility tools are also important. The company now has to either
develop the tools from scratch or tweak what is available.
Lockheed Martin Corp. is also in the market for a more advanced Web
crawler for full-text searches, said Katie Finneran, manager of
communications for the company's enterprise information systems group in
Bethesda, MD. This would let employees go beyond keyword searches and
perform key "phrase" searches on all information accessible on the
intranet. The company is also working on a corporate-wide directory and
posting a helpline with questions about various projects answered by
project managers.
Lockheed Martin wants 80,000 employees connected by the end of 1996,
said Finneran. The company eventually hopes to reach all 170,000
employees. In order to achieve this, Lockheed Martin will set up
standalone PC stations on workshop floors so workers who don't have a
desk and a PC will be included.
Progress pays off
Despite a few remaining gaps that need filling, many organizations are
finding great success with their intranet ventures. Federal Express
(Memphis, TN) now has 40 to 50 Web servers on the firm's internal
network and a SPARCserver 1000 run by corporate staff for departments
that do not want to create a Web server on their own, said Susan
Goeldner, FedEx's manager of Internet technologies.
Flexibility and responsiveness are two big advantages of publishing
information on the Web, according to Goeldner. If a schedule needs to be
updated, that can be done in one place, and instantly the new
information is available to everyone.
Pre-publishing also pays dividends. Groups are experimenting with
publishing early drafts of documentation so that users can comment and
make suggestions. The comment and revision process generates more
feedback and, Goeldner expects, a better finished product.
Intangible benefits are nice, but saving cold, hard cash is always a
compelling incentive. FedEx is in the process of putting corporate
procedure manuals online and making them accessible with a Web search
engine. This searchable publishing project will not only greatly reduce
publishing costs, it should also significantly reduce the time it takes
employees to find the data they want.
Annual savings on publishing and distribution costs of one manual that
is published twice each year could be as high as $120,000. Goeldner said
she has eight corporate manuals sitting on her bookshelf, and there are
probably a few she does not have. Admittedly, they won't save 100
percent of the publishing costs immediately since limited print runs
will still be required.
Seventy percent of the staff at corporate centers now have Web access.
Goeldner expects that will grow to 90 percent by June, and nearly 100
percent by the end of the year. Field locations lag a bit behind. Sixty
percent of employees should have Web access by June 1996, she said.
At Sun Microsystems, the Web now plays a pivotal role in the delivery of
training materials to the company's employees. Bonnie Toy, director of
quality tools and training for SunSoft, said the company needed to offer
its technical staff more efficient training. "We found that classroom
training was not appropriate for most engineers," Toy said. "Most of
them want immediate training right before they need to use the
particular program and don't want to waste their time reviewing
information they already know." Sun had to make various training options
available right on the engineers' desktops so the necessary materials
would be there when they needed them.
The vision for developing training modules for Sun's internal Web began
in June 1995, and by January of this year, the Web site was up and
running. Employees can access the site and merely click on the software
tool training module they need. The training itself is provided in a
variety of formats ranging from digital video to plain text -- whichever
is the most effective and useful. The movie format, due to the high
bandwidth required, is used sparingly. Interactive computer-based
training modules are also being considered. Web-based training is an
alternative, not a replacement to classroom training, stressed Lee. But
such training is often the only option when classroom training for a
certain application is not available, and this has been an enormous
benefit to employees.
Every tools training has a "hack" section with tips that are often
contributed by the engineers themselves. Another component is the
"technical journal," an archive containing short descriptions of some
interesting technical subjects. A third component takes advantage of all
the e-mail that is exchanged among engineers regarding technical
problems and solutions by depositing it into a searchable hypermail
archive.
Sun will introduce a fourth component, the "projects registry," this
month, said Robin Lee, education program manager for Sun University
workgroup solutions. The registry will index engineers' home pages
and/or project Web sites and enable employees to link to them.
Toy said that while Web-based training at Sun is still in its infancy,
so far the company has achieved its goal in providing a
centrally-located, attractive, well-organized, and fast way for
employees to access technical training information when they need it.
Harris Corp. (Melbourne, FL), a 27,000-employee, multinational firm with
four business units, is using internal Web servers to dish out volumes
of information crucial to the firm's day-to-day business. The intranet
isn't new to Harris. Web-based applications are actually a second
generation follow-on to 35 topical e-mail listservers, 80 bulletin
boards, and about 15 internal Usenet news groups, said Chuck Musciano, a
staff engineer at Harris and SunWorld Online 's Webmaster columnist.
Harris now uses intranet Web applications for a variety of purposes --
searchable employee database, internal job postings, and health and
safety data. In additon, it plays a central role in promoting the firm's
Quality First initiative, said Jack Johnson, Harris's vice president of
quality and new products and head of the Quality First Steering
Committee.
Harris started out putting its "Red Book" on the Web -- the firm's
exhaustive compilation of all the polices and procedures that govern
each of Harris's business units. Rather than tracking down one of the
volumes to resolve a question, Musciano said, employees can simply
access the book through the Web browser on their desktop computer.
The firm also compiled what they refer to as a database of "best
industry practices" experts. This amalgamation of quality gurus -- both
internal experts and outside contractors -- increases the efficiency
with which employees can get the information they need to do their job,
Johnson said. Best practices training events, tutorial documents, and
other Quality First materials are also on the firm's intranet.
Harris' intranet has even climbed to the top of the corporate ladder.
Johnson said the President's Council, a committee chaired by the CEO to
facilitate interdivisional collaboration, debuted on the Web in March.
Corporate material that is currently being faxed around to divisional
presidents and other involved parties will become part of the Web site.
Receptivity among upper management is a bit of a mixed bag at Harris,
Johnson said. "Executives who keep their computers on their secretaries'
desks obviously don't even think about it, but hands-on users are very
excited about its ease-of-use."
Motorola's (Schaumburg, IL) Cellular Subscriber Group (CSG), is also
taking a step beyond simple document publishing by using the Web to
improve the quality of its software development processes, said Rick
Johnson, director of applications development for CSG.
Johnson, who oversees about 20 developers within CSG, formerly worked
out paper-based processes defining the gathering of user requirements,
the design process, coding standards, and other elements of the
traditional development process. Now CSG is putting that data on an
enterprise-wide internal Web, together with data entry and search
capabilities.
Many of these processes are designed to fulfill requirements of the
Carnegie Mellon University's (Pittsburgh, PA) Software Engineering
Institute, which confers quality ratings analogous to ISO 9000
certification. CSG's Web project extends the reach of these processes
and procedures, and documents the linkage between the processes and SEI
requirements.
"This is more than simply a manual of style," Johnson said. "We will use
the Web as the front-end to a database application that records all the
information now submitted on paper. Data will be entered on a
project-by-project basis to create an online repository."
The result, Johnson said, is that the organization will be better able
to create metrics for the data it collects and will be better prepared
to fulfill adopted process and quality control requirements.
The project not only benefits CSG, but also leverages its knowledge and
experience to the wider Motorola enterprise, Johnson said. Groups that
are not as far along in the process can even use CSG's creations as
templates for their own work.
US West (Denver, CO) is also seeing the proliferation of intranet Webs.
The firm's Global Village project started a year and a half ago with
four employees and a $75,000 budget. The goal was to spread information
and training regarding how Web technologies could support internal
business operations. Today there are nearly 50 different information
servers supporting a wide variety of functions across the
55,000-employee firm, said Sherman Woo, the project's director.
One creative and elegant example is the way US West uses a Web front-end
to a database to manage Domain Name Server (DNS) information on an
enterprise-wide basis.
Previously, one group managed the DNS information, said Ted Johnson, a
network manager. They were frustrated with the responsibility of chasing
down information as systems and subnets changed. User groups were
annoyed because there was no way to confirm whether the centrally-held
information was accurate until they talked with someone on the phone.
Now any employee can check the accuracy of IP addresses or host names
via the Web. Each group can enter password-protected DNS information
into the database and update information about their systems as
necessary. The central database updates Web pages hourly.
As intranets mature there will certainly be a lot of changes to cope
with -- more than just changing technology. Organizations will have to
play out the inherent tension between fostering creativity within user
organizations and establishing corporate controls and enterprise-wide
standards.
For the time being, these firms are relying upon departments to control
information and servers central to their mission. responsibility for
data which crosses organizational boundaries generally ends up in the
hands of corporate webmeisters. [][14]
About the authors
Barry D. Bowen is an industry analyst and writer with the Bowen Group
Inc., based in Bellingham, WA. He can be reached via e-mail at
barry.bowen@sunworld.com[15] .
Carolyn W.C. Wong is an editor for SunWorld Online Her e-mail address is
carolyn.wong@sunworld.com[16] .
What did you think of this article?
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[Also this month...][26]
Client/Server:[27] Start-ups offer Web tools
Get your free subscription[28] to SunWorld Online
Reader Survey results:[29] NT impresses
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Resources:
* EDS:[30] http://www.eds.com/
* Eli Lilly:[31] http://www.lilly.com
* FedEx:[32] http://www.fedex.com
* Forrester:[33] http://www.forrester.com
* Harris:[34] http://www.harris.com
* Lockheed Martin:[35] http://www.lockheed.com
* Motorola:[36] http://www.motorola.com
* Sun Microsystems:[37] http://www.sun.com
* USWest:[38] http://www.uswest.com
* Internet Advisor:[39] http://www.advisor.com/ia.html
* The Intranet Journal:[40] http://www.brill.com/intranet
* intranet white papers:[41]
http://www.netscape.com/comprod/at_work/white_paper/index.html
* Creating Net sites:[42]
http://www.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/index.html
* 80/960101/feature1/index.html">How Sun uses the Internet:[43]
http://www.sun.com:
80/960101/feature1/index.html
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[1] http://www.sun.com/sunworldonline/swol-04-1996/swol-04-intranet.html
[2] #sidebar1
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[19] /sunworldonline/icons/b-feedback-feat.gif
[20] /sunworldonline/swol-04-1996/swol-04-toc.html
[21] /sunworldonline/icons/b-toc.gif
[22] http://www.sun.com/
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[24] /sunworldonline/swol-04-1996/swol-04-oobook.html
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[28] /sunworldonline/common/swol-subscribe.html
[29] /sunworldonline/swol-04-1996/swol-04-nt.results.html
[30] http://www.eds.com/
[31] http://www.lilly.com
[32] http://www.fedex.com
[33] http://www.forrester.com
[34] http://www.harris.com
[35] http://www.lockheed.com
[36] http://www.motorola.com
[37] http://www.sun.com
[38] http://www.uswest.com
[39] http://www.advisor.com/ia.html
[40] http://www.brill.com/intranet
[41] http://www.netscape.com/comprod/at_work/white_paper/index.html
[42] http://www.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/index.html
[43] "http://www.sun.com:</A
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