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A Wider Use For Corporate
Webs
By Kathleen Murphy and Ellis Booker
A growing number of companies are leaving a virtual key under the mat
to enable their business partners to access the corporate intranet.
Security remains a huge concern for most of these companies, but so
far, invitations inside the firewall rarely involve risking highly sensitive
information or performing transactions.
Although companies from a variety of industries--from pharmaceuticals
to utilities--are turning parts of their intranets into information resources
for business partners, the most avid innovators in this area seem to be
companies with a technological bent. And those MIS executives who are
exploring the idea of cross-enterprise intranets need to persevere, since
they are essentially championing a use of technology that requires some
modifications in organizational structure.
"It's a remarkable culture change," said Vic Stein, manager of systems
development for Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois.
By itself, electronic information-sharing between companies is nothing
new--it's been happening for years, through the medium of Electronic
Data Interchange. But the increasing ubiquity of the Internet within U.S.
businesses is prompting many IS managers familiar with EDI to consider
moving their intra-company data-sharing to the Web. And it is prompting
other managers who have never been able to justify the expense of EDI to
take a fresh look at the potential of exchanging information electronically
with corporate partners.
Indeed, for some corporate IS managers, the knowledge that their
business partners have Web browsers on their desktops is opening up a
whole new realm of creative application development.
The extent of this new trend affecting the intranet was hinted at in a
recent report by Forrester Research, of Cambridge, Mass. In a survey of
35 Fortune 1000 companies, Forrester found that nearly half were already
permitting third-party access to their intranets.
While that percentage certainly wouldn't hold for U.S. corporations as a
whole, the mushrooming of intranet deployment by itself suggests that
hundreds of such "welcome mats" will likely be laid out in front of
corporate intranets over the next year.
According to Business Research Group, Newton, Mass., the
percentage of corporations installing an intranet has grown from 11
percent a year ago to 55 percent now. By next January, BRG expects 70
percent of corporations will have an intranet.
Here's a look at how five early adopters in this area are making their
intranets into information resources for their business partners.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield
At Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois, Chicago, the streamlining of business
processes has involved, in part, extending the company's intranet to
health-care providers. The next step, said Blue Cross' Stein, is to add
functionality to this approach--for instance, by permitting doctors and
hospitals to send their documents electronically over this facility. Stein
added that the organizational issues involve making the case for
extended intranets to executives who may be worried by security issues.
"There's a tremendous concern about the risks, but these go away with
more knowledge," said Stein, a 30-year veteran of information systems
jobs, who noted that the commercial sector is at the dawn of this concept
of cross-enterprise networks.
Security experts suggest having a plan before inviting over the
neighbors.
"By knowingly, and with forethought, extending your intranet, you can
do it in a secure way that offers the least security risk," said Mark Taylor,
product manager at firewall maker Raptor Systems, Waltham, Mass. "The
threat is real, and the cost is real and significant."
Many companies have permitted outside access to their intranet, but
few have done it in a planned and calculated way, Taylor said.
MTC Telecom
At Transphere Interactive Inc., a San Francisco consulting firm, clients
receive worksheets called "WebSense" to help the consultants decipher
the objectives in corporate Web construction.
Transphere helped MTC Telecom create an intranet for its international
sales force of 10,000 people. The Petaluma, Calif.-based
telecommunications provider allows third parties to check billing histories
and examine rate structures through the intranet, said Ron Wolf, vice
president of technology at Transphere.
Transphere also constructed a site for Fujitsu whose internal Web
includes an index of products, product numbers and corresponding URLs.
The index is mailed to electronics distributor Marshall Industries and
posted on Marshall's intranet, Wolf said. When a Marshall intranet user
clicks on the Fujitsu index, the Fujitsu intranet offers up the requested
page in a seamless intranet-to-intranet play.
"A lot of times, it's hard to find the difference between an Internet and
intranet solution," Wolf said.
Marshall Industries
Marshall Industries, El Monte, Calif., is a $1.2 billion electronic
components company that isn't shy about embracing the latest Web
technology. Not long after completing an Internet-based videoconference
with a business partner in Spain, CEO Rob Rodin explained that Marshall
Industries' 150 suppliers and several thousand manufacturer's reps,
including Fujitsu, all had invitations to the intranet. The portion of Marshall
Industries' intranet that allows customers, suppliers and agents
contemporaneous access to specific information is called "PartnerNet,"
Rodin said.
When visitors step through the firewall, they can obtain sales reports,
price quotes and design information. A profiling system is used to match
levels of authorization to areas of the intranet with passwords entered by
guests and Marshall's 1,400 employees.
Pfizer Inc.
The intranet at Pfizer Inc., New York, claims between 5,000 and 10,000
users, and is now being extended to "dozens" of the drug company's
strategic partners, according to Ed Glassman, the company's director of
information technology strategy.
Glassman said cross-enterprise, virtual private networks are being
used to create teams, particularly among Pfizer and its research partners.
Pfizer spends $1.7 billion a year on drug design.
"Some of these applications are Web-based, some are Lotus
Notes-based and some are just shared files," he said, adding that the
impact of these solutions on the speed of development is enormous.
Glassman repeated the oft-cited advantage of using a Web browser.
"The Web interface is so intuitive and easy that if you deliver an
application with any other user interface, the first question you'll get is,
ÔWhy?'"
Boston Edison Co.
New England utility Boston Edison Co. is one company on the verge of
extending its intranet to business partners and to its larger customers.
"Security issues are causing people to go slowly," said John Dubiel,
manager of planning at Boston Edison Co., which is employing
CheckPoint Software Technologies Ltd. firewalls to protect the perimeter.
"Somebody could get intelligence on your company. I don't even like going
into this."
In addition to security issues, Dubiel said he is even more concerned
about the possibility of errors occurring in transactions involving the new
system.
Many corporations share Dubiel's reluctance to talk about the what-ifs
of security breaches. But Dubiel said the benefits of moving the power
company's collaboration with business partners to the intranet are
significant.
"It increases your potential partners," Dubiel said. "Many, many more of
our customers have Internet access than access into a value-added
network. Most of our major commercial customers have it."
A pilot study focusing on non-financial transactions will determine how
willingly business partners and customers move to an "intranet economy,"
Dubiel said. Outsider access has a precedent at Boston Edison, as some
technology vendors have provided support for their applications through
the intranet using a password system.
Other extended intranets show the range of possible benefits from
opening portions of an intranet:
Access Graphics Inc., Boulder, Colo., the biggest channel integrator
for Sun Microsystems products, has been letting value-added
reseller customers into its Web site since April 1995, said Tim Enwall,
the company's director of electronic commerce. Suppliers use the
system to check stock levels on fast-moving products, and
customers can check pricing and availability, Enwall said.
"We also let them track their order from the time it is input to our
system to the time Federal Express delivers their purchase to the
door," Enwall said.
"Within 12 to 24 months, we expect to generate more end-user
traffic so that end users can go to reseller Web sites from ours," he
said, noting that there may be additional revenues to Access
through advertising.
At Frontier Technologies Corp., customers will get access to the
intranet for the purpose of reading a customized newsletter about
new products from the Mequon, Wis., software company.
At Internet Shopping Network, applications that were once available
only to staff at the Web catalog company are finding their way to the
public at large.
"We had an account-lookup system for customer service, all
browser- and Web-based," said company founder and vice president
of marketing Bill Rollinson. "Seven months later we opened it up to
customers so they can check on their order status."
The system, up for the past eight months, obviates the need for
customers to call or e-mail customer service with questions about
account history or status. "Ninety percent of our customers can do
this themselves, " Rollinson said.
Mount Laurel, N.J.-based Bluestone Inc., maker of a
Web-to-database product called Sapphire/Web, updates information
about its product sets with distribution partner Informix.
"Informix gives us a [secure] URL, we update our own
information, and this is made available to their internal sales staff,"
said Robert Bickel, Bluestone's director of products. In the case of
Informix's setup, Bluestone can either FTP an HTML document or
interactively add the product data via a Web form. "The form goes to
a reviewer, and they post it in a few hours on their intranet," Bickel
said.
Still, the security issue looms large for all these users. For
example, Marshall Industries does not risk posting private intellectual
property on its intranet.
Pfizer does not trust transport of the cross-enterprise intranets
across the public Internet, and uses its own closed corporate TCP/IP
network for this. At Bluestone, access to the live corporate
database is not permitted. Instead, Bluestone allows its trading
partners into a server that contains a partial copy of the company's
main databases.
Reprinted from Web Week, Volume 2, Issue 8, June 17, 1996 ©
Mecklermedia Corp. All rights reserved. Keywords:
intranet_case_studies Date: 19960617
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