Long, long ago (OK, maybe just a few years back), we defined intranet technologies in a very specific way. We said they were internal Web services that existed physically behind our firewalls. That was all well and good at the time. We've invested in internal infrastructure to support our intranets, and we've spent time creating content that is meaningful for our businesses.

We began by coding our own internal Web pages. Soon, useful tools arrived and end-users were able to create pages easily. This led to a Wild West approach to internal Web content at most companies. It also left us with a highly unmanageable content blob called the intranet.

That was then, this is now. Our initial definition of the term intranet is changing, and we need to change with it. Two principal things fuel the change in intranet definition: infrastructure and content management. While our definition of intranet may be changing, the result will be more manageable and less costly than what we have experienced thus far. In this column, we will examine the changes in infrastructure and content management a bit more closely to identify what our new concept of intranets may be in the near future.

First, Web serving--whether public or private--has become a commodity item. It is no longer necessary nor profitable to maintain separate infrastructure to support your intranet. Security options exist that can protect your internal Web services down to the level of objects within your various pages.

It is more advantageous to think of public versus private Web services from a logical vantage point. Why invest in two Web server infrastructures when you can logically (and securely) split the content across a single Web server infrastructure.

The cost of Web infrastructure has come down for several reasons. Chief among these are growth in the outsourced Web infrastructure marketplace and the dawning of the open-source movement.

If an outsource arrangement can manage your public (extranet, Internet) and private (intranet) Web services more efficiently than you can, it may make perfect business sense to move all services under one roof. This approach presumes that you negotiate an agreement with your provider that accounts for security and privacy concerns.

Many companies who decide to host public and private Web services internally have found that it is no longer necessary to invest in expensive, proprietary operating systems and pricey Web server technologies. The open-source movement and technologies, such as Linux and Apache, have shown that it is possible to support Web services without a huge expenditure.

Even if you host your intranet internally, the idea that you must maintain separate physical Web services for public and private use is no longer valid. Certainly, you will want to make portions of a singular Web infrastructure strategy open to the public while logically partitioning other portions for private consumption. And, you will have to carefully rethink your security strategy based on logical rather than physical partitioning.

Infrastructure to apps

So, it would seem that intranet infrastructure is making the logical leap forward, but what of intranet software? The situation is in flux and many different approaches have been tried, with several diverse, modular approaches emerging.

We are well beyond the stage of static Web pages. We now leverage dynamic content, and we're quickly moving toward a future where all business applications and internal Web services will be available via the Web browser (this is known as a WebTop). We have tried to use portal constructs to get our arms around the enormous amount of information we want to manage within our internal Web services. However, portals have proven difficult to maintain.

The software side of next-generation intranets will have us combining several different technologies. For example, we will blend portal technology with knowledge management constructs and collaboration tools. By doing so, we can build self-updating knowledge portals that can flex and grow with us as our information and needs change.

Likewise, expect to see more content-management solutions become available, while their technical underpinnings will become more and more sophisticated. Content-management solutions will support the knowledge portal approach as well as a multi-layered taxonomy to better manage content.

Content-management solutions, in particular, are a good way to rope in that Wild West notion of intranet content we have been contending with. Instead of individuals putting up content on a whim, content management lets all contributors submit material or applications to their portion of your internal Web services.

For example, if the sales staff wants to track a promotion in their department, they can use the content-management system to publish that information to the rest of the staffers in the sales department. Or, if a human-resources worker wants to announce an upcoming event, she can use the content management system to publish information to everyone at your company.

Content-management solutions are a sound idea because they allow you to distribute content creation while all content is managed in a central location. Security and proper authentication practices are supported, and end-users can easily understand how to create content given the available tools within these solutions.

Not really the end, but…

The notion of the intranet as we first defined it may be going away, but the idea of having internal Web services is here to stay. Combining Web infrastructure and looking toward self-updating Web services that are supported via a content-management solution will improve the usability and manageability of private Web services while reducing the investment needed to maintain them.

Intranet concepts are changing, and so is this column. I began writing about intranet-related topics more than four years ago, and we've come a long way during that time. Look for more advice on how to build both private and public Web systems in the Web Site Advisor column, by Cary Griffith, starting in January. And, watch for my new Linux Advisor column next month--we have much more to talk about as open source continues to expand its role in the business back end.

Maggie Biggs maggie@biggs.com writes a column on computeruser.com called Strategically Speaking, appearing every Monday.