The concept of communication between business partners using telecommunication
channels is not new and one that has been with us for a number of decades.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
has been with us since the 1970s. The idea is that if two businesses want to communicate
their business electronically, they would need to both adhere to an implementation
of EDI standard and they would be connected by a very private proprietary
network for the communication. These
private networks tend to be very expensive to set up and to maintain. The consequence of this is that the smaller
and the medium enterprises (SMEs)
are generally excluded from the possibility of online business transactions
using EDI. If a SME wants to business
electronically with a large corporate, it is forced to adhere to the same
implementation of EDI that the corporate has.
Over the past few years however Internet has emerged to be the popular platform
for electronic communication. The idea
of Extranet (extended Intranet) is to
enable the business community to conduct their business electronically using
public communication network of Internet in place of the proprietary networks.
In comparison, use of Internet for communication makes the Extranet
a highly cost effective method of electronic communication that brings the
SMEs into the realms of online business with trading partners and provides
them with potential competitive edge. Extranet
is an attempt to use the public lines of Internet for connectivity off the
campus or head office and in essence this means that standards such as TCP/IP
are adhered to for the communication.
I suppose a rough presentation of Extranet could be a Web-based Wide
Area Network. One could compare and contrast the two in terms
of their Bandwidth. With both WAN and Extranet bandwidth limitation is a major
issue. WAN uses expensive-to-set up
proprietary lines or leased lines for connectivity and consequently does not
need to adhere to open standards such as TCP/IP.
Inherently these lines are particularly private and security is very
high. Extranet is an attempt to extend
the internal networks to off-the-site business partners in a secure manner
through the use of public telephone lines or the Internet. This security requires implementation and is
somewhat limited in contrast to that with proprietary networks that are
inherently private and very secure.
It enables a number of trading partners and customers that have common
interest to come together in a tight business relationship. Although cost effectiveness is a very
important factor, a major significance of Extranet is its ability as a non-proprietary
tool to enable the evolution of electronic business.
Extranet is an attempt to extend the Internal networks to the business
partners that are located outside the firewall.
Intranet is the company-wide internal system that serves the needs of
internal community. Extranet partitions the secure and sensitive sectors of the
Intranet from the rest of the web services that could be extended to the
external community. Features of Extranet
are:
The same web-based infrastructure of Intranet is used including web
browser, email client, web server, application server, database server,
middleware, firewall, etc.
One major issue with the extranet is the security. Opening the Internal networks to the
outsiders brings with it the potential security threats. There are two ways of implementing Extranets:
Extranets are easy to implement and is a strategy for connecting the
wider business community in a collaborative and informative environment. There are a number of issues that need
attention when implementing an Extranet:
One
of the strategies in deploying an Extranet by the corporate is to allow hte
trading partners, in particular the SMEs, access to the internal
networks. What are the benefits of
this strategy for the corporate? |
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