SiliconRepublic.com Ireland's Technology News Service

According to the 2006 Intranet research report of the Irish Computer Society (ICS), 80pc of large organisations surveyed said that employees are not taking full advantage of company intranets as an internal communications tool.

The research, carried out by Amárach Consulting and sponsored by pTools Software, surveyed over 200 Irish companies with intranets.

Commenting on the research, Jim Friars, chief executive, ICS, said: “We are delighted with the results of this research and believe it offers a valuable insight into intranet activity in Ireland. ICS will conduct this survey annually and we aim to grow knowledge of intranet activity and allow members to benchmark against the trends and results identified in the research.”

According to the research, document management, e-learning, and contact management were the most prominent intranet tools and Microsoft Office formats the most prominent file format. Intranet features typically revolved around staff announcements and messaging but the list was varied and included documentation and forms, blogs and wikis, phonebooks and directories, weather and menus and even bus timetables.

However, despite the high amount of organisations that believe their intranets are massively under-utilised, 86pc of survey participants indicated that intranet will become more important in the near future. The report found that staff collaboration is the main driver for intranet development.

Tom Skinner, managing director of pTools Software, said “We work extensively with organisations deploying intranet solutions and the research shows a very healthy level of intranet development but a recognition of the need for improvement.”

Google was the most popular proprietary search technology on intranet but a significant number of those surveyed were using Microsoft technologies as the basis of search for intranet also. Almost two thirds of respondents indicated that they used Microsoft operating systems for intranet but they were also less likely to be accessibility compliant than intranets running on Unix or other operating systems.

Although many indicated no accessibility compliance on intranet there was an intention to make rapid improvement. Microsoft platforms featured strongly with twice as many intranets running on a Microsoft operating system than any other environment. In a significant number of intranets, Oracle database technology was used in conjunction with Microsoft servers. Unix platforms also featured strongly and while there was a greater tendency to use open source technologies with this platform, open source did not feature significantly overall.

Gerard O'Neill, chief executive of Amárach noted that the survey shows that IT managers and decision makers are focusing on their intranets as a key resource for improving working practices across the workforce and delivering real productivity gains for their companies.

According to Skinner, “it looks like Web 2.0 has already arrived on some intranets with blogs, wikis and other communication and collaboration features. We see intranet becoming an application, or application space, replacing or enhancing other already overused parts of the network like email. But basically it’s still about sharing information efficiently and putting order and control into internal communications. Just getting the simple things right delivers such powerful results.”

By Elaine Larkin