Intranet Software

When we first started coding an intranet software product, realistically about 8 years ago – an Intranet was a hard to use way to restrict some web content to only certain groups of users – normally the employees of a company.

I have just spent an evening with a few glasses of wine, thinking about how far intranet software products like Claromentis, and there are several other serious contenders, have really come, and how fast the journey has actually been. Potential customers now take it for granted that we have :

* Customisable information management for information locked in version controlled application files
* Cross platform support
* Multi database support
* Localization
* Active directory integration
* Online information management for quality managers
* Products for people who are comfortable with Wiki Syntax
* Project management tools
* Complete APIs
* Totally customizable and branded interfaces for every group of users
* Code distribution, licensing and update systems
* Applications to address sales opportunity management
* Complex permission engines
* Searching and permission based menu systems
* Robust document management
* Tagged and web 2.0 Blogs and news systems
* Global support
* HR functionality for absence management, skills, profiles, directories
* Audit functionality ..

It just seems endless. And each of these areas are far from small in their scope, and very significant to the clients that use our software around the world.

What other kinds of software products have become so far reaching in such a short space of time, and why did it happen in the intranet software space, and not for example in accounts or project management? What is it about internet based permissioned access to information that makes vendors like Claromentis reach out across business units and functional areas that just seemed irrelevant to what we were trying to do even 3-5 years ago? While companies like Sage have just stuck to their core business of accountancy software.

Why do we stretch ourselves so much – always looking to contribute more to the business needs of our customer base, even if at first glance this is not intranet software – but core business unit functionality?

I suppose the answer lies in the client driven desire for a single source of information, a single tool to learn, and the pervasive growth of the internet and its inherent capabilities over the same time frame. Perhaps along with the ever increasing commoditisation of office application file technologies while all this was going on.

I was this week visiting a very large customer, actually at this time of writing a potential customer, and for the first time in many years their own internal IT department were a competitor in the selection process. I remember that was so common up until about 3 years ago – but I can honestly say this is the only time in the last 3 years that a client IT department has said they should be considered for the kind of functionality we provide. Well good luck to their developers – they have some 30 man years of coding to get through in about 2 months!