In a recent presentation, Janus Boye asked the question, is the intranet dead?
Last week I presented at the annual Online Information conference in London in a session titled “Death of the Intranet”. Speaking after me in the same session was senior Forrester analyst Tim Walters and we both agreed that intranets are not dead. However it may be practical in some organisations to avoid the term intranet as it carries too much negative baggage.
I agree with both points here. The 'intranet' isn't dead, in fact things are really only beginning to get interesting right now, with lots of promise in the future. But Janus's point about baggage is very true. It's time to stop thinking about the intranet as 'the internal website' or 'the place where comms keep us updated about company news' or 'where all the policies and forms are.'
The best intranets are far, far more than that. They're integrated business systems, collaboration spaces, dynamic, active areas for information pooling, knowledge bases, expertise finders, rich corporate directories, business intelligence tools, workflow systems...
Perhaps down the track we'll dispense with 'intranet' as a term, maybe opting instead for something like Jane's 'Workplace Web', that frees peoples' thinking from the shackles that 'intranet' has acquired over the years.
What do you think: is the intranet dead, alive, or just in need of a new haircut?
