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A network built on standard internet
technology, typically used by an organisation to share information with
customers, suppliers and other business partners. An extranet is generally
an extension of a company's Internet, modified to allow access by
specified external users.
Although they are based on standard
internet technology, extranets are much harder to build than this simple
description suggests. One problem is security, an important issue when
considering what sort of data to make available, so firewalls,
digital signatures and message-level encryption are commonly
used. A potentially bigger problem is that of standardising data formats and
business processes across organisations. Industry standards such as edi
and, increasingly, xml and web services are
important parts of the solution to this problem. |
