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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Financial Intranet Inc. (OTC:BB:FNTN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FJ who wrote (2890)	9/14/1998 4:11:00 PM
From: Bill Fortune III	Respond to of 2897

Some Intranet issues that companies need to consider when trying to determine whether or not to do it themselves or outsource the service. That is where FNTN comes in by being the provider of Intranet outsourcing services Can I outsource my Intranet ? The advantages will be a faster development cycle and you will be able to use the expertise and experience of professionals in this field. You will also be relieved of the headaches associated with Intranet management and support. If you decide to use consultants to give your Intranet project a jump start, make sure your staff is trained and ready to take over the project once the consultants leave. Also assure that the consultants have provided a good system for your staff to use when the Intranet takes off and grows rapidly. What does my business gain ? You will be able to quantify some benefits such as savings in operating cost, reduction in paperwork and identify the other benefits of an Intranet solution like improved customer service, faster and better access to up-to-date information. THINGS THAT MUST BE CONSIDERED IF A COMPANY PLANS NOT TO OUTSOURCE, BUT RATHER SETUP AN INTERNAL IN-HOUSE INTRANET SYSTEM. How much does it cost now ? The initial cost of setting up an Intranet. This will include the cost of hardware (web server, network adapter and related hardware), software costs (server OS, add-on software, utilities) additional IT and IS personnel and management staff. How much will it cost later ? Include these factors when calculating your long term Intranet related costs.  server and network upgrades to handle traffic.  management tools and manpower required.  software licenses and upgrade fees.  information publishing and archiving costs. Is it manageable? An Intranet is one of those things which is easy to start but can be a management nightmare for a great many companies as it grows. Be prepared to spend a lot of resources for the management of your Intranet if you have not planned the growth well in advance. Some of the things to be prepared for is increased traffic and an increasing number of publishers and users. Try to use web and network management tools to reduce the amount of manual work involved. To setup user accounts provide online forms that will automatically setup the required. Through outsourcing these will be handled by the Intranet provider. What kind of training will my developers and users need ? The developers will need to be trained in the art of web publishing. Break up your group of developers into two subgroups. The first one will be your core Intranet development team which will take care of the server management, application development and technical aspects of he Intranet. the second less technical team will handle simpler tasks like publishing documents to html, converting exiting data sources like spreadsheets, simple databases etc to a format acceptable for your Intranet. Each group will need a different kind of training. Depending on your Intranet environment, find people that will be able to adapt to the new methodology easily. For ex. people with good word-processing and Desk top publishing experience will make for good users of WYSIWYG html editors like FrontPage. Network administrators will make good web server administrators and your programming team will help you develop applications for your Intranet. This can be a time consuming and costly matter if done on an internal basis. How will it affect productivity ? If done right, an Intranet can enhance productivity to a great extent. A lot depends on the type of system the Intranet is replacing. If an Intranet solution is replacing a traditional paper based information access methodology (ex. printed manuals) the improvement in productivity will be tremendous. On the other hand if it is introducing a completely new process you may not be able to measure the productivity in an accurate manner. How secure is it ? Your Intranet will be as secure as the weakest link, which is usually the people managing and using your Intranet. If you do it by the book and use a secure server, firewall, password protected access and physical security for the server machines you are covering all the bases. Also have a policy in place to look for creeping links to unsecured locations, backdoors from the internet to your Intranet, proper use of passwords and other security mechanisms provided by your Intranet setup. Regards, Bill Fortune III