Intranets and Extranets: Extranets

We have discussed intranet in the article: Intranet and Extranet: Intranet, you can check it out for your reference. We shall go through Extranet in this article.

Essentially extranet is private network for the communication within organisation with its employees, vendors, customers.

Obviously, it plays a vital role in change in the way of work. This is because anyone within a organisation can excess to the required information.

Extranets allow companies to communicate with its  stakeholders: employees,customers, partners, suppliers etc.

Extranet ensures the stakeholders where they can access information what they required, can deal with the business activities.

Extranet allows the company to connect with it's stakeholders who are not within a local periphery. Thus, it ensures the smooth coordination with suppliers,customers, and other business partners.

So, it allows the organisations to performs it's work from all over  globe.

What does Extranet do?

I have listed the functions of an Extranet for clear understanding.

Establish direct private network links between themselves, or create private secure Internet links between them called virtual private networks.

Use the unsecured Internet as the extranet link between its intranet and consumers andothers, but rely on encryption of sensitive data and its own firewall systems to provide adequate security.

What is the Business Value of Extranets?

The business value of extranets is derived from several factors. To name a few:

The web browser technology of extranets makes customer and supplier access of intranet resources a lot easier and faster than previous business methods.

Extranets enable a company to offer new kinds of interactive Web-enabled services to their business partners. Thus, extranets are another way that a business can build and strengthen strategic relationships with its customers and suppliers.

Extranets enable and improve collaboration by a business with its customers and other business partners.

Extranets facilitate an online, interactive product development, marketing, and customer focused process that can bring better designed products to market faster.

This image depicts the relationship between internet, intranet and extranet.

We shall continue the discussion on Extranets regarding the use and advantages in the next article.

If you have any queries, feel free to comment.

Thank You