I was first exposed to the term 'intranet' in 1995.  The firm I was with at the time was very much an "in house" operation; it seemed like everything vital to our operation was developed by the owner.  Our billing system was a homebrewed system build off DataEase.  Our internal e-mail system was likewise built off DataEase.  Our tech tickets, still paper back then, were straight printed from an early 1980s era dot matrix printer and you guessed it, they were homebrewed.  

Then came the internet revolution.  Before 1995 the 'net was out there but it wasn't easy to use and there really wasn't much to see.  After 1995, that changed in a big way.  Internet technology took a giant gulp of Red Bull and leapt out of the gates and hasn't looked back.

So it was with the firm I worked with.  We were a traditional computer and networking company who decided to dabble in the internet as a sideline value added offering.  One day the owner had a meeting and introduced us to the word of the day; 'intranet.'  He said it would revolutionize how we did business, communicated, and would be *the* product that our clients would be asking for.

And so my introduction to the intranet was made.

As the years passed the typical intranet grew.  From the beginnings of a home page, some links, and a very crude messaging program the average intranet has become much more user friendly and usable.

How?  What spurred this change from a place that might be updated once a fortnight to a site that has current and dynamic content?

Equal parts technology and experience have allowed this to happen.  On the experience side of the coin we learned what worked, what didn't, what was needed, and all the other little things that make the concept work.  The other side of the coin is technology.

Fifteen years ago adding a link to a page or changing text involved knowing HTML and actually editing the code...or paying someone to do it for you.  For smaller operations that either didn't have the expertise or the time to learn HTML, this added a recurring price tag every time they wanted to make an announcement, add a new document, or simply post the holiday schedule.  Today, we have Content Management Systems, or CMSs, like DotNetNuke (DNN) or dedicated intranet applications like Sharepoint that put the power back into the hands of the user - if you know Word and have basic computer skills you can make changes and update the intranet.

At its core an intranet is all about information and time management.  The old school way of finding a form would be to check a filing cabinet, ask someone, or root through a stack of files on your desk.  With an intranet and a document library, it's as easy as simply selecting the document you want and moving forward with the task.  Time is saved, productivity is maintained, and the end user has the information needed to complete the task.

Years later in my career, after I had moved to a large regional ISP, I saw another, less empirically measurable reason for a good intranet; it helped build and maintain our company's unique culture and cultivated a sense of ownership in the newer employees.  Every company has its own unique culture and history.  An intranet helps document and grow the sense of community that this culture fosters by offering the employees  a place to chronicle the group activities, major events, and other milestones throughout the year as well as discuss relevant topics (we had a discussion board) that wasn't worthy of a staff meeting.

There are numerous methods used to create the current crop of intranets; DotNetNuke and Sharepoint are two of them.  Information in today's corporate environment needs to be available and easily acquired.  Both DotNetNuke Intranets and Sharepoint offer the ability to serve as real time document libraries, customer data libraries, and for building intra-company communications - all of which help boost productivity and morale within the company.