Development Approaches

Once the development team has been assembled and briefed, decisions need to be made about how the intranet will be developed. Generally, the decision comes down to whether the production is done by an in-house team, external contractors, or outsourced to an ASP (Application Service Provider). Specifically, the decision relates to a "build or buy" issue that may resolve with a decision to create a hybrid site.

There are six potential approaches to intranet development. They are:

• Developing an intranet internally with proprietary code

• Purchasing an existing intranet application and customize it

• Developing a hybrid intranet with basic components (usually templates) developed in-house and other more sophisticated functional components developed by third parties.

• ASP Model (complete outsourcing)

• Open source portal adoption

• Leveraging existing enterprise technology to create an intranet or intranet components

We will look at each of these in detail now.

Developing an Intranet Internally

This is a time-honored and trusted approach that makes sense when there are strong internet designers and developers in an organization. The development team typically knows the company and its processes better than any outside contractor and can create a new system that specifically solves existing problems instead of just customizing an existing system for another client.

On the other side of this approach is the "not being able to see the forest for the trees" syndrome where a development team can be too focused on the details to see the bigger picture. Also worth considering is whether the internal resources are actually internet developers or just IT staff who are sure they can create an intranet if they're given a chance. Be wary of these situations.

While there is no license cost for using your own technology, there are some drawbacks to developing a proprietary code base for your intranet. Unlike commercial products or software developed by the open source community, nobody else will be working on potential updates for you. If you want to add a new feature, your only option will likely be to have internal or external developers create it for you. That is not to say you cannot use open source components or purchase third-party tools that will allow you to extend your intranet, but integrating these components with your existing system can be very difficult if extensibility was not considered during initial development.

Purchasing an Existing Intranet

There are a number of commercial intranet development companies who concentrate on a single code base and use it for all their clients. In most cases, the product is highly customizable and is available to their own development clients and external clients in a component-based fee structure. This could allow you to potentially take the list of functional components determined in your Needs Analysis and cross-reference them with different vendors' products to find a package that meets your needs.

The advantage of choosing a package like this is that you can purchase it outright (although some vendors have annual licensing fees), have your team customize it with your design and content, and then host it on the web server of your choice. It gives you autonomous control over the growth and management of the site over time. And it allows you to take advantage of a well-developed system, ideally, that's been tried and tested over time.

The disadvantages of this type of package relate to the expense, time, and energy required to make minor or major changes, and to fix problems when they occur. While upgrades to newer versions can solve some problems and "known bugs," the process of upgrading can be difficult since any modifications made to older installations will probably have to be redone (though this isn't always the case now that many developers are separating content and layout from functionality within their applications, and even separating subelements of their own functional components).

Many vendors offer support service subscriptions, but their staff won't be as dedicated to your problems as your internal IT staff would be if they knew how the system worked. When an issue needs serious attention (for example, when it crashes the night before a major event and can't be restarted), their support staff may not be available to help. This can obviously lead towards frustration (and that leads to Anger, and eventually the Dark Side). The alternative option of hiring an independent consultant (or someone from the vendor) to provide a fix can be quite expensive, depending on the amount of work required. So you may want to consider investing in training for some of your IT staff to become knowledgeable about the innerworkings of the product.

Some of the leading vendors in this ready-made product area (applications that will work right out of the box with some minor customizations) are:

• Deep Blue Creative (http://www.deepbluecreative.com)

• Elleance (http://www.elliance.com)

• GroupSpace (https://www.groupspace.info)

• Intranet Connections (http://www.intranetconnections.com)

• Klick Interactive (http://www.klickit.com)

• Process Software (http://www.process.com)

• Kaorg (http://www.kaorg.com)

Developing a Hybrid Intranet

One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that a global community of developers has gathered to create and innovate, and to share. Many developers work on their own or in collaborative groups to create code, tools, applications, and tutorial web sites where other developers can learn, beg, borrow, buy, and steal from them. As a legitimate corporate intranet builder, you are an elite client for many of these developers and will probably get very positive responses when you begin shopping for functional components.

The best place to start looking for the additional functionality pieces of your intranet is by searching the Web for specific components or going directly to a developer community site like http://www.evolt.org, http://www.sitepoint.com or http://www.siteexperts.com. Most of these sites have discussion groups where you can post e-mail queries and requests for proposal (RFP).

Another option is to visit community code portals like http://www.aspin.com, http://www.planet-source-code.com, and http://www.programmersresource.com and literally browse and compare products like you were shopping in a retail establishment.

While the cost of this type of solution is attractive, the drawbacks are similar to those articulated in the section on developing an intranet internally.

Application Service Provider (ASP) Model

One of the most profound changes in intranet development has been the emergence of Application Service Providers (ASPs) over the past several years. These companies provide full end-to-end solutions for companies that want to build corporate intranets, and offer them for substantially less money than it would normally cost to develop a proprietary application.

The ASP providers have built their businesses on the fact that companies who pay for their own development, maintenance, and staffing costs related to their intranets are never guaranteed a good product. They offer an alternative to this uncertainty.

ASP products will typically be fully customizable. You can integrate your own corporate designs for all the relevant templates (using a friendly web-based interface in most cases) or select a set of their standard designs and just add your logo to them. You can also choose from many different functional components that they make available, and pay only for what you want. This allows you to build your intranet site to the specifications outlined in your Needs Analysis and not worry about all the technical details (which will be a highly subjective positive or negative factor).

There are many ASP intranet companies in the marketplace today, and more emerging every few months. Some of the top-tier companies to consider are:

• http://www.intranets.com

• http://www.intranetfactory.com

• http://www.infostreet.com

• http://www.intrasmart.com

• http://www.sitescape.com

The benefits of going with an ASP company are that only a minimal amount of technical resources will be required to set up the intranet site, and that non-technical staff will be able to maintain it through a CMS. In addition, the ASPs will typically have 24-7 technical support available.

The drawback to this type of solution is that the investment will be ongoing, with cost formulas based on raw usage, number of users, amount of storage space used, components selected, and miscellaneous other factors (each model is unique to the company). Furthermore, they all have monthly or annual fees that your company will have to continue paying to keep your intranet site located there. And, unfortunately, if you change your mind and want to deploy your intranet internally later, most of the integration work done with the ASP will be lost. Additionally, consider the financial health of the ASP because if its business fails, your intranet may as well.

Open Source Portal Adoption

There are a number of excellent open source internet portals and web logs (blogs) that have been developed in recent years. These applications are quite popular and can easily be deployed inside an organization specifically for intranet purposes. This type of solution will allow you to tap into a global movement of developers who are constantly improving and developing these applications for a variety of motivational factors. This means that support for technical problems is never very far and that proactive administrators who follow mailing list discussions will often be made aware of bug problems before they are ever noticed internally.

The development of these open source portals and donation-ware blog software has been instrumental in the recent surge of community web sites. Many of these tools are quite sophisticated and include advanced CMS functionality and interactivity as part of their base installation package.

Some of the systems worth evaluating if you choose to proceed on this route are:

• http://www.phpnuke.org

• http://www.moveabletype.org

• http://www.drupal.org

• http://scoop.kuro5hin.org

• http://www.pmachine.com

• http://www.aenovo.com

The drawbacks of using this type of system relate to the fact that the software's full code is in the public domain. Unless an administrator in your organization is going to actively follow the development of the chosen application (through mailing lists or discussion boards), it is possible that a security issue can become publicly known and remain unfixed in your installation. This could result in a compromise of system integrity or a successful hacking attempt. Your IT team can address this by putting the intranet inside the corporate firewall, but this issue needs to be thoroughly explored before a solution like this is chosen.

Leveraging Existing Enterprise Technology

Some corporate environments already have existing enterprise solutions in place for e-mail communication and management of business process. The most-deployed products in this category are Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange. Both of these platforms can be extended to some degree to create a proper intranet that runs parallel to existing systems and leverages existing technology (such as user authentication).

Neither of these systems are thought of very favorably in the development community because the intranet extensions were generally an afterthought to the products' development. That being said, both IBM and Microsoft are working on improving this (through WebSphere and .NET, respectively) and it might be worthwhile to explore this option if the system is already in place. It would allow you to centralize your processes (probably running on the same machines) and have current IT staff extend their responsibilities to cover these areas, too.