Intranet access continues to be a major, major intranet challenge for most organizations with manufacturing or remote employees. Remote, manufacturing and retail employees very rarely have access to a computer. Therefore in some organizations a huge chunk of employees do not have access to the intranet.

If a large chunk of your potential audience cannot access the intranet, the intranet’s value to your company is severely limited.

For those in this position, there are three principal options:

1-    Virtual Private Networks (VPN) – can be expensive

2-    Internet-based portal – inexpensive but security often a concern

3-    Central kiosks – moderately expensive, moderate security concern

I really don’t want to spend too much time on VPNs as this is my least favorite of the options – though it serves its purpose well – and there’s tons available for reading on VPN by just doing a simple search. Besides, it’s more of the “executive” solution most often related to senior management or senior sales staff who are afforded a laptop when away from the office.

Internet-based access via a .com site that requires a user id and password is becoming more and more de rigeur.

Google finally unveiled its much hyped communications tool. However, Google Talk is not a lot different than Skype, Yahoo! or Microsoft’s tools – in fact, for some, its inferior.

Here’s what Wired magazine has to say about the new Google Talk tool:

Google's Latest Is All Talk

Wired, August 25, 2005

 

After several months of feverish speculation about a mysterious new service under development, Google unveiled its latest tool Wednesday: Google Talk, a text-chat and voice-communication program that looks nice, but has no obvious advantage over competitors. The moment you fire it up, the sparse white design and primary-color logo make it obvious that this is a Google application. When not in use, Google Talk shrinks down to a "speech bubble" icon on the Windows taskbar (for the time being, it's available for Windows only). Clicking on this opens the main pane, with a searchable list of your contacts, or "friends" as Google optimistically calls them. – Google's Latest Is All Talk 

ZDnet also rings in with a less than flattering review:

What's exciting about Google Talk?

ZDNet – August 25, 2005

I'm a bit underwhelmed with the launch of Google Talk, which is a bit of a surprise, since Google has a history of coming up with decent services. I use Google Search dozens of times every day, and check Google News every hour or so when I'm at the computer. (More if I'm procrastinating… thanks Google…) Gmail is the only Webmail service I can stand using for actual mail (as opposed to catching spam. Any Webmail account will do nicely for that) and I've even taken a shine to the Google Toolbar for Firefox. What's exciting about Google Talk?

I had the pleasure, at the invitation of John Amyotte, Microsoft's Solutions Specialist for Portals, to see Microsoft's very own main intranet portal, microsoftweb. As can be expected, MS is "eating their own dog food" and using their own portal product SharePoint and Windows SharePoint Services to power their internal business hub.

microsoftweb is very well executed and organized and features significant improvements over previous iterations. What stood-out most is the use of personalization and profiling that makes the retrieval and presentation of information far more relevant to the individual user.

A link on the home page called My Site (the portal recognizes the user based on their Windows login - of course, MS uses single sign-in) links to John's personal website that his both a 'public' view (what those in the company see) and a 'personal' view (links and information that only he sees. The presentation and the type of information presented is customized by the individual user including news, stock ticker, presentations, etc.

microsoftweb also features a single search engine -- used for both finding people and their contact information (directory information) and general intranet pages and documents (enterprise search). When doing a search the results are divided into two columns: the first column highlights search results that are relevant intranet pages and documents; the second column produces results that are all MS employees and links to their respective sites and information that are relevant to the search query (a thumbnail photo of each person is also presented).

Most impressive about microsoftweb and the Sharepoint offering is the collaboration tools inherent to the product. Among other things Sharepoint offers a template for team meetings that store relevant documents, list team members, account for member attendance, trigger reminder emails for meetings, etc.

There are currently 31 million Sharepoint users the world-over. Moreover, Microsoft isn't resting on their laurels: Gates & company are investing the bulk of a $700 million project and a dedicated team of some 300 people to beefing-up Sharepoint and fully integrating a new and improved content management system (Content Management Server as it is known today).

Lookout Plumtree and SAP!

Microsoft's Intranet Portal Innovates

Microsoft has released more toys for Sharepoint customers – and they’re free!

There are 30 applications in all including:

·         online training

·         meeting management

·         absence and vacation scheduling

·         help desk

·         marketing campaigns

·         employee timesheet

·         room and equipment reservations

·         travel requests

Best of all, if you have Sharepoint and would like to use these freebies, you can download the toys at the TechNet Web site.

Wait one of the World’s most profitable firms is giving away freebies!?! There has to be a catch...

Microsoft is betting that the enterprise intranet is one of the more lucrative markets of the enterprise customer. This is just another in a series of Sharepoint announcements and their multi-hundred-million dollar plans for their portal product (including integration with Content Management Server and Office).

For more information:

More On Microsoft's Enterprise Plans

Microsoft's Worse Kept Secret