At the end of 1999, more than half of all American employees had access to the Internet through the workplace; that number is expected to increase to three-fourths of all workers by the end of 2000 (Gantz, 2000, p. 33). Making the Internet available to workers is neither difficult nor particularly costly; companies can set up a high-speed connection, a firewall to protect internal security, and provide browser software (which is readily available). Employees are then able to use the Internet for business purposes for everything ranging from research to making purchases over the Internet and using e-mail to keep in touch with clients and vendors.

Intranets, on the other hand, require a far greater investment than simply providing Internet access. An intranet uses hypertext markup language (HTML) pages similar to those on the wider Internet, but is contained within a single company. This means that the company must develop the intranet, including having the right hardware as well as software, create a strategy for how the intranet will be developed and maintained (and by which departments), and provide ongoing support for the intranet whic

Duke's system shows bidders, plant managers and corporate asset managers a "snapshot" of the production capability of all plants throughout the day. It separates out the production needed for existing clients, allowing bidders and others to see what capacity is left for selling on the open market. With this data, bidders can set a price for wholesale energy controlled by energy aggregators, shipping power to an area where demand is high from an area where production capacity is available. Duke estimates that the $200,000 system has already paid for itself, but recognizes that it is impossible to quantify exactly how much of an advantage the system has provided to a company which did more than $17 billion in sales prior to introducing the intranet (Hamblen, 2000, p. 40).

Sharples, H. (1998, November). Company's intranet yields new benefits. Graphic Arts Monthly, pp. 102-103.

Small and medium-sized companies tend to use intranets to provide general information to employees, such as providing the employee handbook on-line and commonly used HR forms. However, companies of this size are also using intranets to provide benefits information as well as information about the company's finances and sales (as deemed appropriate by management). According to a survey of small and medium-sized companies, 26 percent currently provide access to employee benefits election information on their intranets. In addition, 24 percent use the intranet as a way to collect and distribute personal data to and from employees, a feature which can be particularly useful when employees are located at different work sites. Fully one-fifth of these companies also offer 401(k) retirement information or plan to do so in the future, another benefit of the intranet which reduces the workload on human resource professionals (Troiano, 1999, p. 8).

Successful intranets requi