Intranet and Extranet market is expected to grow at 9.2% annually

Intranets and extranets are not out of the technology race. They were ignored for their own perspective by users. Intranet and extranet were left unattended and neglected due to emerging futuristic technologies.

The growth of technology has pushed people to look for information in the World Wide Web rather than an intranet or extranet source. But that can't go forever. As Artificial Intelligence comes for dead technologies rescue through collaboration, it could find a way to stabilise and re-establish both the sources. Intranet, extranet and enterprise collaboration tools have been increasing its revenue in recent years. A survey suggests that enterprise collaboration market could grow to US$48.1 billion by 2024 from existing US$31 billion with a growth rate of 9.2 % annually for over five years.

The emergence of AI in the field has yielded more investment. The enterprise collaboration tools have been used as a driving force for the improved usability of intranets and extranets. The third-party enterprise collaboration intranets such as Microsoft's SharePoint and Google Drive cloud services are also a reason behind its development. Cloud computing is an expandable market. Reports leverage that cloud computing is expected to grow from US$272 billion to US$ 623 billion in a five-year cycle between 2018 and 2023.

Seeking cloud computing to aid intranet and extranet has its flows with the need for internal IT support in favour of cloud-hosting IT outsourcing services. Further collaborations with AI will unravel wide possibilities for the long-forgotten platform.

About intranet

An intranet is a private source network contained within an enterprise. It is used to share company information and computing resources among employees in a confidential manner. Intranet helps in increasing the conversation between a company or an organisation by allowing employees to easily access important information like links, applications and datasets that are at the company's record. Intranet is considered as a secure platform by establishing a database that maintains all the usernames of people who are allowed accessibility.

Applications of intranet

• Company's data can be maintained in a single database by centralising the information.

• Making collaborations become easier as the source is extended across the entire network.

• Giving employees their personalised roles including content input within the company.

• Making employee directories, company news and organisational charts readily available for internal communication improvement.

The need for intranet never leaves as it has its own flows. Most organisations still look for intranets to get better connectivity and employee output. It is an easy source to keep the workers engaged and soothes the team purpose. Modern intranets extend up to providing telephony and message exchanges. However, it is hard to admit that intranets can be employees first preference. Tech workers are used to labour at a certain level of usability and intuitiveness with the internet. Henceforth, they expect the same from intranet. But intranet is not hopeless as AI features are there to aid.

Some ways AI extend its features to enrich intranet

Adding a search feature: Intranet carries a lot of information. Companies use it as a source to input all the data and other essential information of an organisation considering it as a safe source. If taken calculation, the data input will go over zettabyte. But this has brought a flaw of tough data findability and time consumption. It is approximately calculated that employees spend around 20% of their work time in searching for data. Think about how much could be profited if the data source is easy to find.

Certain AI-enabled applications could fill the search time and make employees utilize that on something more productive. The AI application can connect all the internal and external enterprise systems and act as a 'one-stop search' for the organisation. For example, Modern intranets like Mesh 3.0 understands the NLP and enables smart suggestions and auto-fill based on the user's past activities and profile.

AI bots for an error-free copy: Search features should have two important things. They are good quality taxonomy and metadata. Without these, the search feature might likely provide duplicate data and obsolete results, leading to further confusion. AI bots can act as a bridge to automate metadata generation, automate data tagging, classification and organisation, and generate taxonomy recommendations.

Easy connectivity with experts: AI also unravels a feature which could aid in connecting with the right people. The AI analyses help employees find people they are searching for within the organisation provided the current activity, location and preferences. This feature can connect the worker to an expert in minimum time.

About extranet

An extranet is a private network allowing third-party partners to gain information, typically about a specific company or institution without granting access to an organisations entire network. Extranet can take on many different forms depending on the purpose they are designed to serve and the collaborators who utilize it.

Types of extranet

• Project extranet- This acts as a managing tool when several parties engage in a group initiative.

• Logistic extranet- A platform that allows connection between suppliers to distributors to couriers to customers and keeps the pathway open for exchange or modification.

• Integrated extranet- This keeps track of the company's inventories and update it instantaneously to online sellers.

It is not just the intranet that could benefit from the intrusion of AI. Extranet could also make its existence more worthy when AI gets in the race.

Security scanners to protect malware: Cyberattacks and security breach are the main threat when it comes to remote working. As the Covid-19 has pushed a lot of organisations and its employees to do work from home, the major concern they had to overcome was data and work safety. They feared that intranet and enterprise collaboration tools will be subjected to malicious attacks.

To keep these scary situations away, organisations use powerful AI to scan through the email attachments for malware. Gmail scans 300 billion attachments every week. These features of AI keep extranet into existence among companies and their connections.

As AI invasion turn technologies into success, intranets and extranets are currently thriving the fast-growing automation sector with the help of AI tools that maximizes its usage. It is hard to conclude that intranet and extranet won't exit after some time as AI intrusion will bring breakthrough technological changes.