In "Intranet Toolkits: An Overview and Starting Point," published in the January/February 2000 issue, I urged readers to "strap on their virtual tool belts" and promised a 2001 update on toolkit developments. 

One thing that became immediately evident while preparing this update is the continuing commitment by the content vendors to improve their products for intranets. This is indicated by their product development and/or marketing efforts. Vendors are obviously banking on the continued growth of intranets; after all, IDC declared last year to be the "age of the intranet" and predicted that by the end of the year 2000, 64 percent of all employees in 17 surveyed countries would have access to an intranet, as compared to 4 percent in 1998. Content vendors are working at illustrating the benefits of the addition of external content to internal intranet applications. 
 

New Buzzwords
A first thing to note is a change in toolkit terminology. The term "intranet toolkit" is fast disappearing, as major content vendors appear to be following the lead of Internet, knowledge management, and e-business services in labeling and referring to their products as "solutions." Check their Web sites to learn about "Dialog Intranet Solutions," "Factiva Integration family of solutions," or West Group's "IntranetSolutions." 

The shift from "tools" to "solutions" means that our definition of intranet toolkits needs to broaden for this year's overview to include some new developments and services presented by vendors as intranet "solutions." A softer, fuzzier concept than "tools," solutions may include a combination of intranet software applications, new ways of packaging content, as well as the provision of services such as intranet consulting. 

Integration is also a theme in vendor marketing literature. To understand why this is the case, we remind ourselves of our definition of an intranet toolkit:

Software applications designed specifically to facilitate the integration of external information content into an intranet.

For Factiva in particular, the term "integration" is particularly apropos in that the first of its Factiva branded products, Factiva Publisher, integrates content previously available from two separate products, Dow Jones Interactive and Reuters Business Briefing Select. Factiva also facilitates the integration of external content from those two information products with content from internal sources. 
 
 

[Complete article available in print] 

 

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