An extranet is a private network that uses Internet protocols and the public telecommunication system to securely share part of a business's information or operations with suppliers, vendors, partners, customers, or other businesses.

An extranet can be viewed as part of a company's intranet that is extended to users outside the company. The same benefits that Web technologies have brought to corporate intranets are now starting to accelerate business between businesses.

Extranets can be used to exchange large volumes of data, share product catalogs, share news with trading partners, collaborate with other companies on joint development efforts, jointly develop and share training programs with other companies, provide or access applications between companies, and much more.

Extranets have become a solution of choice by allowing improved access to information and the ability to improve business processes without massive changes to computing infrastructures.

The challenge is to establish centralized control of site structure while maintaining decentralized management. To that end, we offer four areas of focus to effectively plan a fully functioning and scalable application:

Architecture

Building an application is more than just putting up a Web site. It's collecting different Web sites and interconnected systems and fusing them together to form one large site. For development or integration to be manageable, a centralized architecture must be considered. Forethought must be given as to how these systems will be maintained, administrated, navigated, updated and modified. Equadoor will work with you to architect your site in such a way that it incorporates integration of different technologies, ensuring that your application scales as your site matures.

Navigational Structure

Large applications can be difficult to navigate. Designers often forfeit speed for supposed intuitive navigation, and users face getting lost or growing impatient in multiple drill-downs. Link maintenance can also be a challenge in large applications, since decentralized development of pages lends itself to broken links.

Equadoor knows how to architect a site with a rapid yet intuitive navigational structure that is also easy to maintain and administer.

 Application Integration

Your environment is complex, no doubt containing many different business systems. Each vendor might have its own proprietary solution for Web enabling its product, but for you this means purchasing additional products, providing expensive training for employees, and absorbing additional overhead to manage the hybrid environment. Equadoor can assist with architecting your site so that integrating disparate applications can be accomplished quickly and efficiently.

Content Organization

Ensuring simple content management is an important element of any application. Many corporations now recognize the value of capturing other information assets that are generated on the desktops of its employees, partners, and customers. Capturing this information simply and efficiently is an essential piece of content management. Equadoor offers the appropriate tools, and the depth of experience, to recommend best practices for how content should be input and managed in a Web environment.

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