Intranet tools

Intranet 2.0 tools have become mainstream technologies and are transforming employee communications, collaboration and organizational work and knowledge management. According to the Intranet 2.0 Global Study findings (350 respondent organizations from across the globe), nearly 50% of the respondents have deployed some social media or intranet 2.0 tool. Among the adoption findings:

In the crush to support public websites, I think (too) many Web CMS vendors are ignoring Intranet scenarios. Nevertheless, the practice of managing Intranets continues to march ahead globally at a rapid clip. Today at KM World and Intranets 2008, I had the good fortune to catch up with several Intranet leaders and gurus alike. If you care about Intranets, two things you should know about: StepTwo Design has issued its second annual Intranet Innovations Awards. A quick perusal of just a handful of the global winners suggests that at least within some enterprises, Intranets are alive and well.

There's no doubt that Optika (www.optika.com, Booth #1433) is onto something big with its new 32-bit, three-tier, intranet-based eMedia solution.Connie Moore, an analyst with Giga Information Group (www.gigaweb.com), said, "Optika's vision and technology initiatives represent a bold new step forward for the workflow-enabled imaging industry. Creating a unified toolset that integrates the various points along the paper trail is a real step toward eliminating paper at its source."And beta user Tom Reynolds, senior network engineer for GMAC Commercial Mortgage (Detroit), contends that "Optika eMedia is much more than just an imaging product. It will be an integral part of brokering our business transactions through the incorporation of EDI and electronic commerce."

As we've noted previously, intelligence and law enforcement have proven fertile ground for enterprise search vendors. One supplier, ISYS, has found a very cozy niche with search solutions for local law enforcement. ISYS wins in part on the strength of its longstanding desktop search product (you can read more about ISYS in our Enterprise Search Report). There are two small stories here: first, with the right engineering resources, toolkits like ISYS can can be molded into viable industry solutions; and second, those solutions increasingly encompass a continuum of search search services from the desktop to intranet to enterprise...

"Let’s face it, search sucks on most intranets." So begins StepTwo Designs' new handbook, Improving Intranet Search. The report helpfully goes beyond Search-as-project to Search-as-service. But as a service, you can't just turn it on and expect it provide what your employees need. Effective search -- on your Intranet or anywhere else -- is not a commodity utility. It's something that needs care and feeding on an ongoing basis. The good news: regardless of system, there is a lot you can do to improve the searcher's experience, and this handbook lays out all the tasks in a nice, easily-digested format. Does your intranet search engine suck? Try to fix it first before seeking out a new tool.

The mandate to create and manage information on intranets, Web sites and extranets is a universal requirement among today's organizations. They share the need to harness the power of the Web in new, effective ways in order to generate maximum value from content, documents, images and other assets—in the end using the Web as a true business tool that supports the sharing of content and knowledge.To communicate effectively via the Web, and to do so powerfully and consistently, requires a comprehensive solution that fully supports an organization's people, process and information.Ektron's content management solutions and Web-based editor tools are used in more than 13,000 integrations worldwide, including Fortune 500 corporations such as Intel and Celestica, as well as mid-size businesses, colleges, and hospitals. Ektron helps organizations to lower their content-lifecycle costs, comply with regulatory requirements and unify the efforts of distributed knowledge workers

A new York-based law firm is using portal technology to organize and maintain the large volume of information used in its practice. Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy has implemented a knowledge management solution from LexisNexis geared specifically for law firms. The tool gives Milbank attorneys and legal professionals one location to access the Milbank Research Portal, the Internet and the firm's intranet, documents, memos and precedence database. Those resources can be searched at the same time through the portal's one-search capability. The portal is powered by Plumtree Software."The [solution] will save our attorneys, paralegals and administrative staff significant hours of valuable time," says Alirio Gomez, Milbank Research Portal project manager. "We now have much more effective access to and use of the information universe inside and outside the firm. This has allowed us to dramatically increase our efficiency, which in turn increases our productivity and profitability

Sparling, Inc. made a name for itself by offering clients creative design solutions they couldn't find anywhere else. In order to ensure staff had access to all of the necessary tools to produce state-of-the-art design concepts, Sparling needed to find a way to efficiently disseminate the wealth of knowledge that existed within its organization to all employees. Submitted by Oracle

BackWeb (www.backweb.com) provides accelerator applications that deliver information, sales tools and document updates, automated delivery and alerting technologies to hasten the response to change. The first of those modules, the Market Intelligence Manager Sales Accelerator, is specifically for business intelligence. It gathers information about competitors, customers and the marketplace from any Internet or intranet location. According to Mark Gaydos, BackWeb product manager, installing a BI system requires buy-in from the IT department as well as line of business managers. "You have to be sure both the user and the network administrator have a positive experience," he said. One way BackWeb excels in that area is in delivering content. "We call it polite communications," said Gaydos. "We back off if you go to use the network." An additional network feature is a "Bandwidth Regulator," which limits the amount of bandwidth used by the system

People make critical business decisions every day and need the confidence to know those decisions are based on accurate and reliable information. Organizations rely on LexisNexis every day to access an unmatched collection of authoritative news, business, legal, public records and tax information to get the answers they need.And you can have those answers delivered the way you want them—in a way that allows you to create new insights and positively impact the way you do business. LexisNexis is known for its Content Integration Solutions, which combine the premium content of its vast information warehouse with leading technology to help you put relevant information in the right context for your employees and site visitors.LexisNexis® Publisher delivers pre-determined content and alerts directly to the intranet via easy-to-use administrative tools that allow for format flexibility resulting in a truly integrated, relevant rich intra/internet experience for the end user.