Extranet creates competitive advantages for companies
An extranet is a private network that uses the Internet protocol and the public telecommunication system to securely share part of a business's information or operations with suppliers, vendors, partners, customers, or other businesses. When we talk about extranet, we cannot forget mentioning Internet and intranet. They have very close relationship. First there was the Internet, which is available for everyone to use. Then Intranet uses the same friendly Web interface but put up firewalls so that only employees can see the information on the site. Finally, the extranet was created. It is somewhere between Internet and intranet. There is still a firewall, but it allows only selected outsiders, such as business partners and customers, to log in. To some extent, one can think of an extranet as being a private portion of the Internet. If the secure aspect of an extranet were moved away, it would be just a piece of Internet.
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The Goodyear Headquarters main building.You can also think of extranet as an Intranet that allows authenticated outside users to access it. Therefore, the only difference between the Internet, Intranet and Extranet is who has access to what information.
Extranet has both advantages and disadvantages for companies. An effective extranet needs not only to be designed but also to be improved to meet business needs. Advantages of an effective extranet will outweigh its disadvantages. Companies can achieve competitive advantages such as highly real time communication and low operational cost by implementing extranet successfully.
Pros:
Easily use existing Web technology to create an extranet
From a technical standpoint, an Extranet is a network that contains a set of web pages. These web pages are used to view and exchange information as well as process transactions. In this sense, an extranet can be created with Internet protocols such...