The intranet has been around since the 1990s, in earlier days organizations relied on paper documents and filing cabinets, it was difficult to use electronic file systems wherein Intranet technology offered a radically simplified alternative: a central site where employees could find and share essential information with point-and-click ease. Today’s interactive platforms that enable the fast and efficient exchange of internal information are quite different from those of the past.

An intranet is a private computer network that uses Internet protocol technologies like TCP/IP, HTTP, etc, to securely share any part of an organization’s information or operational systems within that organization.“Intra” stands for “internal” and therefore describes the use of an internal communication tool. The prefix “Intra” is also translated to “within”. The meaning of the company intranet is, therefore: an internal communication tool that is used between employees. An intranet wears many hats inside an organization some intranets are limited to a specific local area network (LAN), while others can be accessed from remote locations over the Internet. An employee who wants to access the intranet must have a special network password and be connected to the LAN. However, an employee working remotely can gain access to the intranet through a virtual private network (VPN). The VPN allows users who are not actually connected to the required LAN to sign in to the intranet and access all the same information and functions that would be available had they been connected to the LAN. All advances that appear on the Internet immediately applicable to Intranets since both networks built on the same technology.