My take is that everything did the "website thing" during the dotcom era, for better or worse, and feel they can move on. With many intranets getting old and very ugly, they are becoming a real imperative for organisations...

Posted by: James Robertson on December 2, 2002 11:53 PM

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A lot of people poured a lot of money into Intranets over the past five years. Now they are are falling apart, and companies are desperately trying to re-envision, renew, rebuild, regenerate them.

May companies are also looking to cut costs at the moment, and they see intranet usage as one of the main ways to cut internal costs. (Cost-Reduction Centered Design).

Posted by: Mac on December 3, 2002 04:23 AM

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I think for a relativally low investment intranets can provide a pretty decent RIO. They often start as small static pages and grow organically over years until they become a bit messy. Then phase 2 happens and things get modernized.

Posted by: James on December 3, 2002 09:47 AM

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I think Intranets are becoming more "legitimate". I remember when I tried to propose one at my company five years ago and was told "We don't need a website just for us."

Companies are realizing that they can do a lot more with Intranets than connect people inside their own company. They can link with smaller companies that are related to them (one example is a Credit Union linking up with their major sponsor group), deploy sophisticated applications, have a secure internal environment for beta testing new software that will be rolled out to customers, and so on.

I think the IA community deserves a pat on the back for this one - by showing how vast amounts of information could be organized, displayed, and updated, it really removed the "ouch" factor from starting an Intranet - once managers saw the potential for time and resource savings, it became a no-brainer. I'm sure others contribute, too, but it was in the IA community that I first saw the Intranet idea seriously pushed.

Posted by: Lydia on December 3, 2002 05:20 PM

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