Training is a large cost in any corporation. Enormous amounts of training need to be done in any company, particularly large ones. The costs associated with training are not only financial-they are the time devoted to training, and perhaps equally important, the time and money wasted if a company doesn’t properly train its employees.

Training needs to be done to orient new employees to the corporation itself-things such as teaching about corporate procedures, where to find information, how to fill out forms, rules that managers must follow, and other similar orientation issues.

Another level of training has to do with how to use particular pieces of software at the corporation-for example, how to use the accounting system or a database.

The most complex level of training incorporates not just how to use software or how to follow procedures, but how to actually do business at the company. For example, many companies put new sales employees through a substantial amount of training that encompasses teaching about the industry in which the salesperson is selling, information about the product to be sold, as well as specific sales techniques to be used.

Training is not just for new employees-it needs to be an ongoing process. New products and goods to sell mean people need to be taught about them. New software and business procedures require that people be taught how to use them.

An intranet can help with all these kinds of training. It can cut costs, save time, and ensure that people get better training. On the simplest level, Web pages can be built to train people. The Web can be used as a multimedia training tool by including pictures, video, audio, with the text. It can be interactive as well-people can answer questions, take tests, and try out procedures.

More revolutionary will be intranet-based multimedia applications. Videoconferencing will allow trainers to teach people across the entire intranet. People won’t have to be physically in the same room; instead, they can be seated at their PCs. And they’ll be able to interact and ask questions using the technology as well.

With whiteboard applications (in which people can see what is on each other’s computer screens), a teacher can demonstrate how to use a particular piece of software, and everyone connected can see on their computer screen what the instructor is doing, and can ask questions by doing things such as circling a portion of the screen, and asking questions about it.

Streaming video and audio technologies (which allow people to watch videos or listen to audios without having to wait for them to completely download) can be used for training as well. The ultimate training tool, however, may be virtual reality. A virtual world is built that someone can walk through and interact with in the same way as with the real world. Virtual reality has been used by the airlines and the military, for example, to train pilots.

Using Multimedia Applications to Train Employees

Training employees is a major cost to many corporations. All employees require training on an ongoing basis-training for mundane things such as how to fill out new forms and procedures, to more sophisticated things, such as being given information about new goods and services the company sells. Multimedia on an intranet can be a very effective training tool.

• It can be expensive for CyberMusic to fly instructors across the country to teach small classes-many instructors need to be paid, in addition to travel costs. With intranet videoconferencing, however, a single instructor can teach a class live, and people across the intranet and across the country can follow along on their computers via desktop-to-desktop videoconferencing using a videoconferencing program like CU-See-Me. With CU-See-Me, people log into servers called reflectors, and can then participate in a videoconference. They can be seen and be heard by the instructor, and so can ask questions as well. CyberMusic uses videoconferencing to train its sales employees on sales techniques.
• Sometimes, particularly with a sales staff, it can be difficult to make sure that everyone can participate in a videoconference at the same time. Additionally, people may at times want refresher courses when a trainer isn’t available. To solve the problem, CyberMusic videocasts training videos across the intranet, using streaming video technology. Anyone who wants to watch a training video can click on a link on a Web page to a video clip, and they can watch the training video at their own leisure. The video clip is played from a streaming video server.
• Audio technology can be used for training as well-in particular one called RealAudio. People can click on a link on a Web page, and when they do so, they will hear an audio clip. The clip can also display HTML Web pages as it plays the audio clip. In the case of CyberMusic, RealAudio is used to teach its employees what records are in their catalog. People can click on music clips from all their recording artists, and as they listen, can view Web pages with pictures and information about the artists. The audio clips are played from a RealAudio server.
• For in-depth training on how to use a particular piece of software, CyberMusic uses whiteboard applications. Whiteboard applications allow many people to view what is on each other’s computer screens. An instructor can teach, step-by-step, how to use a piece of software, and everyone connected to the whiteboard can see what he is doing on their own computer screen. The instructor can also mark up the screen, and everyone connected can see what he is marking up. CyberMusic uses whiteboard applications for training its accounting department how to use a new accounting system. CU-See-Me reflectors allow for whiteboard applications.
• Virtual Reality has long been used in training applications-notably by airlines and the military in training pilots. In virtual reality, virtual worlds are built that people can walk through and interact with. At CyberMusic, virtual reality is used to teach recording engineers how to handle a recording session. A world has been built in which engineers have to not only handle the technical aspects of how to use the recording hardware, but even have to contend with rock artists gone awry, intent on destroying the recording session.

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One way that intranets can be used to easily and effectively deliver corporate news to people is to use so-called “offline readers”-software that allows people to read news by having it automatically retrieved by their own computer, instead of forcing them to connect to a Web or other intranet server to get the information. Pictured here is a popular offline reader called PointCast. Offline news readers like PointCast can retrieve intranet news as well as news from the Internet.

• When an intranet administrator wants to have news delivered to people’s desktop computers on the intranet, he or she fills out an HTML-based form that contains all the information to be delivered. The form can include news stories, as well as URLs that people can connect to.
• PointCast software on an intranet server converts information in this HTML form into a format that it will use to make the news available.
• As a security measure, only authorized people have access to filling out the form, or have access to the intranet PointCast server. If someone wants news delivered via PointCast, they will have to contact an individual who has the rights to use the server.
• PointCast can be used to deliver news other than just intranet news, in a variety of topics, including breaking news stories, politics, business, entertainment, sports, financial information, and more. In order to deliver this non-intranet-created news, the intranet PointCast server connects to a server on PointCast’s Internet site, and downloads the news. This news now resides on the intranet server, along with intranet news.
• In order to get news delivered to them, people on an intranet must have the PointCast client software. People can customize what kind of news they want delivered to them-for example, to get sports but not entertainment, politics but not weather. An intranet administrator can set it up so that everyone will receive intranet news, however.
• Using the PointCast client, the person can now read the news on his or her own computer. The software can also be set up as a screen saver so that when the computer is idle for a certain amount of time, the news will flash across the person’s screen.
• At set times determined by each individual, the PointCast client software connects to the intranet PointCast server. The software downloads the news that the person has requested. A person can also manually tell the client software to download the news at any time requested.
• Often, in news and intranet stories, there are URLs to sites that have further information. When that link is clicked upon, an Internet browser is launched, and the specified site is contacted. The person can now read more in-depth news. For example, on an intranet, a brief news story may go out about the company’s quarterly earnings. A link to a Web site could be embedded in the story that would have more in-depth financial information, and links to corporate financial database.

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It’s often difficult for people within a corporation to keep abreast of company news. Using a variety of technologies, intranets can broadcast and make available the most up-do-date corporate news. Pictured here is the way that our fictional record company CyberMusic uses their intranet to deliver corporate news and information.

• The CyberMusic company newsletter, which is updated weekly, is posted publicly on an intranet Web server. Employees can contact the server at their leisure to read the latest corporate news.
• A Java ticker runs across the top of the newsletter page. This ticker is used to display news alerts and the latest news. It is updated every hour of the working day, so that people can read the most up-to-date news about CyberMusic, such as which recording artists have recently been signed, and where CyberMusic records are on the record charts. Every time a person views the newsletter, the most up-to-date news is downloaded for display by the Java ticker.
• Electronic mail is used to send everyone on the intranet the same information that is being sent to the outside world. For example, at CyberMusic, every time a press release is issued, that release is also sent via e-mail to everyone in the corporation.
• An intranet can be used to deliver instant “alerts” to anyone connected to the intranet. Server broadcasts can be directed to every person connected to the intranet based on their TCP address. These broadcasts are not host specific and appear over whatever application is running. “Offline news readers” can be used as a way to deliver intranet news to everyone at CyberMusic. This software works on a client/server model: The client connects to the server and gets the news. Anyone can then read the latest news while at their own computer. See the next illustration to see how offline news readers work.
• From the Web newsletter, there are links to discussion areas, so that people can discuss the latest happenings at CyberMusic. The discussion areas are used not only to air people’s opinions, but also so that anyone in the corporation can publicly post notes about what is happening in their department. These discussion areas take advantage of the Network News Transfer Protocol used by USENET.
• CyberMusic uses streaming audio technology to deliver the news. Streaming audio lets people listen to news reports over the intranet, from their computer. At CyberMusic, this audio news includes clips from the latest records released, and interviews with corporate executives.
• CyberMusic also uses streaming video technology, which allows people to see and hear videos across the intranet, while at their computers. Anyone working for CyberMusic can watch any video made by any CyberMusic artist, while seated at their computer, using streaming video technology.

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Keeping everyone in a corporation up to date about the latest news in the corporation is a never-ending, often impossible task. It’s particularly difficult in large corporations with many departments and divisions that are geographically separated.

There are many ways that intranets can be used to solve the problem and keep everyone in a corporation informed about corporate news. Corporations can post their company newsletter on intranet Web pages. Because Web pages can be updated so much more quickly than newsletters can be created-and because there is no delivery time involved-the newsletter can be far more up to date than traditional printed newsletters and, with no printing and mailing costs, Web newsletters are less expensive, too.

Intranets can also be used to deliver literally up-to-the minute news flashes. The Java programming language can be used to create news tickers that can flash the breaking news across the top of the newsletter home page. Intranet broadcast technologies can be used that will send out a news flash to everyone connected to the intranet that will run on top of whatever applications they’re currently running. And electronic mail can be broadcast to everyone inside a company with important news, such as press releases, or news about quarterly corporate earnings.

An intranet can also deliver more in-depth information in more involving ways. Audio clips and video clips can be delivered via streaming technologies, so that people can listen to interviews with corporate executives, for example, or see news reports about the company.

An intriguing technology for delivering news to intranets is so-called offline news readers. With this technology, corporate news-and news from the outside world-can be delivered to everyone on an intranet.

Offline news readers work on a client/server model. An offline news server carries the latest corporate news. To update the news on the server, someone only needs to fill out an HTML-based form, and that information is put into the proper format for broadcast. Only certain people on the intranet are allowed to update the news on the server.

Since people on an intranet may want to read news about the outside world, not just about the company itself, the offline news server also has on it that kind of news as well. The server gets this news by connecting to another news server on the Internet, which sends it the information.

To read the news, people need an offline news client. The client connects with the server at intervals set by each user, and downloads the news. People can customize their news feeds to get only the kind of news they’re interested in. Once the news has been delivered to their local computer, they can use the client software to read the news. They can also click on links in the news stories that will launch a Web browser, and then contact a site that has more information about that particular story.

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For companies that sell goods and services to the consumer market, providing technical support can be an expensive, time-consuming chore. Using a combination of a company’s intranet and the Internet, technical support costs can be cut dramatically, and better technical support can be delivered. This illustration shows how our imaginary company CyberMusic uses them to provide technical support. CyberMusic manufactures CD players as well as publishes and sells records, so this page shows how they provide technical support for both lines of products.

• CyberMusic creates a public Web site for technical support that anyone can access over the Internet. They publicize the site in their product literature, in their advertising, and even when people call into their technical support lines, a recorded message suggests that people access the Web site to get immediate technical support. The Web site is located on a bastion host outside the CyberMusic intranet, and is separated from it by a filtering router. The bastion host and the filtering routers are part of the firewall that protects CyberMusic’s intranet from the Internet.
• CyberMusic has found through the years that only 10 or 12 common problems cause 80 percent of the calls to their technical support phone lines-and these are problems that can be solved quite simply. (For example, a surprising number of people simply forget to plug in the power cord of their CD player.) So CyberMusic posts the problems and answers to them in FAQs on their Web site. This cuts down tremendously on calls to their technical support line.
• Not all problems can be solved by reading the FAQs. So CyberMusic uses several other techniques for providing technical support. The company creates a database of common problems and solutions that can be searched via the Web using the Common Gateway Interface. A CGI program takes the user’s question, formulates it as a query for the database, submits it, and returns the result of the query in an HTML formatted page.
• Sometimes the best technical support is provided by people, not FAQs and databases. So CyberMusic has created a number of discussion areas where people can ask questions about their problems, and where CyberMusic technical support professionals can answer the questions. In yet other technical support areas, customers can answer each other’s questions. These areas are set up as USENET newsgroups, accessible via browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft’s Explorer.
• The company also provides a “mailto” link on the technical support page that when clicked on launches an e-mail program in the customer’s browser, with the e-mail address of the technical support staff already filled in. The person can now type in a question, and the e-mail will be sent through the Internet, through the CyberMusic firewall, and then to the technical support department. Once there, a technical support manager uses groupware to route the request to the proper person, and uses the tracking features of groupware to see that the question is answered.
• CyberMusic CD’s contain more than just musical information on them-they can also be read by a computer and contain interviews and interactive articles about the musicians and other information. CyberMusic has found, however, that some computers have trouble reading the CD’s. To solve the problem, they make available special drivers and patches for those computers. The drivers and patches can be downloaded directly from the Web site on the bastion host. This saves CyberMusic a great deal of money in processing, handling, and mailing costs.
• CyberMusic, like many companies that sell products to consumers, tries to maintain as comprehensive a list as possible of people who have purchased their products. Most people, however, don’t send in reply forms, and so the number of customer names and addresses they have is quite small. CyberMusic uses its Web site to get many more names. One way to get names is to have people type in their name, address, and other information before they can get to a certain area of the Web site-for example, to the discussions or to download patches. Another way is to sponsor contests on the site, such as giving away CD players and records. When a name and address are typed into a Web form, the data is sent through CyberMusic’s firewall to its intranet. It’s then put in a customer database, where CyberMusic can use it for customer mailings.

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Almost any company that sells goods and services to consumers-and to a certain extent, that sells to businesses-spends a substantial amount of time, money, and corporate resources providing technical support. It need not be a computer or software company. Even people who buy washing machines or CD players or lamps run into problems with the products and need help.

Providing excellent technical support, especially for companies that need to reach a large number of people, can be an exceedingly expensive proposition. Typically, technical support is provided via the telephone, sometimes using toll-free 800 phone numbers. The cost of hiring and staffing support lines, as well as paying for telecommunications costs, can be staggeringly high.

An intranet can help cut those costs. Instead of having to staff many expensive support lines, a company can instead create a public Web site that people can visit. This Web site can contain an enormous amount of technical support information-everything from answers to common problems, to downloadable software to fix problems with hardware, to links to access user-to-user forums where people can exchange answers they’ve found to common problems.

In the next illustration, we’ll return to our imaginary company, CyberMusic, and see how they use their intranet to help provide technical support to their customers.

When companies provide technical support using Internet and intranet technology, much of what they do is posted outside the corporate firewall, on the Internet. A variety of material can be posted. For example, FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) can be posted-answers to the most common technical problems. A database of problems and their answers can be searched directly from the Web, using the Common Gateway Interface. Public discussion areas can be set up, where people post their problems, and technical support personnel can answer. And other customers can answer the questions as well. If the product is related to hardware or software, patches to the software can be posted that can be downloaded to solve technical problems. Another bonus in using Web sites to provide technical support is that the company can get people to fill in their names, addresses, and other information-a way of gathering customer names.

While much of what is posted is outside the corporate firewall on the Internet, what goes on inside the firewall on the intranet is still used in a variety of ways to help provide technical support. The databases that are posted on the Internet, for example, are first created on the intranet, and then exported to the Internet. E-mail sent to the technical support department must pass through the corporate firewall from the Internet. And when someone registers to receive technical support, the information from the person is sent in a secure fashion back through the firewall into the Intranet. There, it will be put into a corporate customer database, so that the company can, for example, send out direct mail to all its customers.

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In today’s increasingly mobile world, it’s important that people be able to access a corporate intranet from their homes or from the road. This illustration shows how that access can be gained via a new protocol called the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP).

1. Before the PPTP protocol, when people wanted to gain access to an intranet they usually dialed into a remote access server through its modem bank. After logging into the server, they were then able to get access to the intranet’s resources. One drawback of this approach is that it required the corporation to pay for long-distance or 800 telephone access and maintain the modem banks, which can easily cost millions of dollars a year.
2. The PPTP protocol allows people to gain access to an intranet by dialing into an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and requesting to be sent to the intranet. The connection to the ISP is made using the normal PPP Internet dial-in protocol. Since ISP calls can be local calls, this cuts down tremendously on telecommunications costs. It also means that the intranet need not have sizable modem pools available to answer every incoming call, another significant cost-savings.
3. The ISP has special software and hardware installed that uses the PPTP protocol. An important component of gaining access to an intranet is to ensure that any data sent to and from it is secure. The PPTP protocol can encrypt the data in the IP packet it receives. It then takes that encrypted packet and encapsulates it inside another IP packet, sometimes called an envelope. PPTP also allows remote users to get at corporate network information that uses other protocols than TCP/IP, such as IPX and NetBIOS. It does this by encapsulating it inside the IP packet as well.
4. The ISP sends the envelope with the encrypted data inside it through the public Internet to the intranet. No one can read what is inside the envelope since the data is encrypted. When data is sent in this manner, it is called tunneling.
5. The data is sent through a firewall to a server on an intranet. This server has the hardware and software necessary to handle the incoming PPTP packets.
6. The person trying to get at intranet data will have to log into this server with a user name and password, just as he or she would have to if directly connected to the intranet, as a way to keep out intruders. PPTP uses two protocols for allowing people to log in, the Password Authentication Protocol (PAP) and the Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP). See Chapter 17 for more on how these protocols work.
7. The intranet server strips off the outside envelope. It then decrypts the data inside the envelope. The person can now make full use of the intranet-or other network resources. All packets that pass between the intranet and the user will go through this tunneling technique.

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The days of working at an office every day from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and only occasionally working into the night are long gone. Today, people may be telecommuting from home, they may be on the road, and they may work evenings or weekends from their home office. The days of the virtual office are here, and intranets are an important part of making that a reality.

Since intranets hold so much of a corporation’s resources, and since so much work these days is collaborative work done via the network, people need access to the intranet in order to do any work. That means they need some remote way of gaining access to the intranet.

Typically, remote access is gained via a modem. The most common method is to dial into a remote access server and its associated modem bank. They dial in using one of the Internet’s standard dial-in protocols, either the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) or the Serial Line Interface Protocol (SLIP). SLIP is an older protocol and has fast been falling out of favor because the PPP protocol is more robust, especially when it comes to handling errors. Part of the process of dialing in involves identification of the user. Some remote access servers hang up and call the individual back at a pre-determined phone number.

After someone logs into the remote access server, he or she can log into machines on the intranet just like in the office. The intranet’s firewall allows packets sent via the remote access server to enter the intranet. Once they’ve logged in, they have full access to the intranet, although at dial-in speeds instead of at higher speeds available when actually at the office.

Providing dial-in access in this manner is expensive, because corporations have to maintain large banks of modems that can be dialed into, and because they have to pay for the costs of long-distance and 800 telephone numbers.

A solution developed by Microsoft, 3Com, US Robotics, and others is called the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP). This protocol allows someone to dial into a local Internet Service Provider (ISP), and from there access their intranet. Costs come down significantly, because the call is made to a local phone number instead of a long-distance one, and the banks of modem pools aren’t needed.

PPTP also allows for people to use other network protocols, such as IPX or NetBIOS, so they can access parts of the corporate network that aren’t TCP/IP-based. And it also allows for secure transmission of data. It does this by encrypting the data being sent, and encapsulating it and the other network protocols inside an IP packet. That IP packet is then sent out over the Internet through a technique called tunneling. On the receiving end, the outer IP envelope is stripped off, and the protocols and data inside the packet used. The person now has full access to the intranet and other corporate network resources, and has done it by making a local phone call.

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Corporate intranets can contain an almost unimaginable amount of information. Departments, divisions, and individuals create a wide variety of Web pages, both for internal and external consumption. Human resource information, personnel handbooks, procedures manuals, and newsletters are all posted internally. Databases-both those hosted directly on the intranet and on “legacy” databases on non TCP/IP systems-are available. Add that to all the information that can be gotten via the Internet using the World Wide Web, and you have a serious case of information overload.

There are several ways to help intranet users find the information they need. One way is to create subject directories of intranet data that present a highly structured way to find information. They let you browse through information by categories and subcategories, such as marketing, personnel, sales, research and development, budget, competitors, and so on. In a Web browser, you click on a category, and you are then presented with a series of subcategories, such as East Coast Sales, South Sales, Midwest Sales, and West Sales. Depending on the size of the subject directory, there may be several such layers of subcategories. At some point, when you get to the subcategory you’re interested in, you’ll be presented with a list of relevant documents. To get those documents, you click on links to them. On the Internet, Yahoo is the most well-known, largest, and most popular subject directory.

Another popular way of finding information-and in the long run for intranets, probably more useful-is to use search engines, also called search tools. Search engines operate differently from subject directories. They are essentially massive databases that index all the information found on the intranet-and can include information found on the Internet as well. Search engines don’t present information in a hierarchical fashion. Instead, you search through them as you would a database, by typing in keywords that describe the information you want.

Intranet search engines are usually built out of three components: An agent, spider,or crawler that crawls across the intranet gathering information; a database, which contains all the information the spiders gather; and a search tool, which people use as an interface to search through the database. The technology is similar to Internet search engines such as Alta Vista.

Intranet search tools differ somewhat from their Internet equivalents. The database of information they search can be built not just by agents and spiders searching Web-based pages. Agents can be written that can go into existing corporate databases, extract data from them, and put them into the database of searchable information. And people on an intranet can fill out forms and submit their information into the database as well. Additionally, since they are built for a specific corporation and its data, the information they gather and the way they are searched can be customized.

How Intranet Search Tools Work

Searching and cataloging tools, sometimes called search engines, can be used to help people find the information they need. Intranet search tools, such as agents, spiders, crawlers, and robots, are used to gather information about the documents available on an intranet. These search tools are programs that search Web pages, extract the hypertext links on those pages, and automatically index the information they find to build a database. Each search engine has its own set of rules guiding how documents are gathered. Some follow every link on every page that they find, and then in turn examine every link on each of those new home pages, and so on. Some ignore links that lead to graphics files, sound files, and animation files; some ignore links to certain resources such as WAIS databases; and some are instructed to look primarily for the most popular home pages.

1. Agents are the “smartest” of the tools. They can do more than just search out records: They can per-form transactions on your behalf, eventually such as finding and ordering the lowest-fare airline ticket for your vacation. Right now they can search sites for particular recordings and return a list of five sites, sorted by the lowest price first. Agents can cope with the context of the content. Agents can find and index other kinds of intranet resources, not just Web pages. They can also be programmed to extract records from legacy data-bases. Whatever information the agents index, they send back to the search engine’s database.
2. General searchers are commonly known as spiders. Spiders report the content found. They index the information they find and extract summary information. They look at headers and at some of the links and send an index of the information to the search engine’s database. There is some overlap between the tools-spiders can be robots, for example.
3. Crawlers look at headers and report first layer links only. Crawlers can be spiders.
4. Robots can be programmed to go to various link depths, compile the index, and even test the links. Because of their nature, they can get stuck in loops, and they take consider-able Web resources going through the system. There are methods available to prevent robots from searching your site.
5. Agents extract and index different kinds of information. Some, for example, index every single word in each document, while others index only the most important 100 words in each; some index the size of the document and number of words in it; some index the title, headings and subheadings, and so on. The kind of index built will determine what kind of searching can be done with the search engine, and how the information will be displayed.
6. Agents can also go out to the Internet and find information there to put in the search engine’s database. Intranet administrators can decide which sites or kinds of sites the agents should visit and index-for example, competitors to the corporation or news sources. The information is indexed and sent to the search engine’s database in the same way as is information found on the intranet.
7. Individuals can put information into the index by filling out a form about the data they want put in. That data is then put into the database.
8. When someone wants to find information available on the intranet, they visit a Web page and fill out a form detailing the information they’re looking for. Keywords, dates, and other criteria can be used. The criteria in the search form must match the criteria used by the agents for indexing the information they found while crawling the intranet.
9. The database is searched, based on the information specified in the fill-out form, and a list of matching documents is prepared by the database. The data-base then applies a ranking algorithm to determine the order in which the list of documents will be displayed. Ideally, the documents most relevant to a user’s query will be placed highest on the list. Different search engines use different ranking algorithms. The database then tags the ranked list of documents with HTML and returns it to the individual requesting it. Different search engines also choose different ways of displaying the ranked list of documents-some just provide URLs; some show the URL as well as the first several sentences of the document; and some show the title of the document as well as the URL.
10. When you click on a link to one of the documents you’re interested in, that document is retrieved from where it resides. The document itself is not in the database or on the search engine site.

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Intranets can communicate with one another through the public Internet, instead of by using private leased lines. Leasing private lines can be very expensive, while using the Internet is inexpensive. However, of vital importance when companies do business with one another using in-tranets is that any transactions be kept private and secure. Virtual Secure Private Networks (VSPNs) allow intranets to communicate with one another over the Internet, while keeping all data secure, by using “tunneling” technology. See Chapter 20 for details on how VSPNs work.

1. When a business wants to order goods from CyberMusic-such as a music store called The Music Box-it contacts the CyberMusic intranet using a VSPN. It can search through the database of CyberMusic records to find the records it wants to order. A CGI program gives them a special retailer’s view of the data shown to regular customers.
2. As a further way to en-sure that the transaction is kept secure, and that it is really The Music Box doing the ordering, a special electronic “token” (like the digital signatures described earlier in the chapter) may be required that proves that the purchaser is indeed The Music Box. The token is sent over the VSPN.
3. When The Music Box finds the records it wants to order, it fills out a form. This form may be customized specifically for The Music Box, and will be different from the form used by the general public, and by other companies that do business with CyberMusic.
4. Once it is verified that The Music Box is doing the ordering, the transaction is put through using a secure payment system. There are a variety of secure payment systems that can be used for business-to-business transactions. One is de-scribed in “How Financial Transactions Work on an Intranet.”
5. Information about the order is automatically transferred over the intranet to CyberMusic’s fulfillment department, which ships out the records ordered.
6. CyberMusic can also do business with its suppliers and contractors using an intranet. For example, it can post on its public Internet Web server the fact that it is looking to buy raw, uncut CDs that it will use in the manufacturing process, and have new suppliers submit bids over the Internet. Established suppliers can connect via a VSPN, and submit their bids which are then routed to the appropriate people within the intranet.

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