In
today's information age, organizations survive by capturing
their business processes within information systems. MIS departments
have successfully implemented legacy systems, relational databases,
and packaged applications to provide users with interfaces to
the critical business processes within an organization. However,
the emergence of the "information superhighway" known
as the Internet is placing new demands on organizations and
their MIS departments. In order to establish and maintain a
competitive advantage, organizations need to extend and expose
their business processes to their suppliers, distributors, and
customer. The Internet provides a widely available, inexpensive,
low-maintenance infrastructure for MIS departments to meet these
demands imposed on the business.
In
order to prepare for their forays onto the Internet, many organizations
are creating internal Web sites, or "intranets". An
intranet allows an organization to leverage the benefits of
Web browsers(simplicity, ease of use, ease of administration,
etc.) while operating in a controlled, secure environment. New,
component-based approaches to application development and system
integration allow MIS departments to quickly and easily expose
selected on-line information and transactions to new users over
an intranet. Legacy systems, client/server systems, and packaged
applications can all be integrated and extended to intranet
users.
This
discussion described how technology that is available today
can help organizations make the most strategic use of their
intranets while laying down an infrastructure that can also
support the global Internet.
Case
Study: NASA
During
the morning session, we also heard from Kennie Jones who described
NASA's experiences with intranets. Jerry and Professor Kathy
Chudoba facilitated an electronic brainstorming session which
yielded the following prioritized list of intranet-related issues:
- data
quality/data mgt
- return
on investment
- infrastructure
- productivity
- security
- acceptance
- training/skills
- development
time & cost
