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Intranets.com, which provides hosted collaboration products for more than 150,000 users around the world, is adding Web conferencing to the mix, and will also unveil enhanced features for its calendar application in the near future.

The Massachusetts-based company has existed in any number of incarnations since it was founded in 1996 as a packaged intranet software vendor. In mid-1999, the company converted to a free, advertising-supported model. In mid-2001, the business plan changed again when Intranets.com went to a paid subscription model, which it now uses. According to Karen Leavitt, vice president of marketing for Intranets.com, 70,000 of the 600,000 users went to the paid model at the time.

All along the way, Intranets.com has provided software that lets users easily share files, calendars, and databases with co-workers, suppliers, and other business partners.

The home page of an Intranets.com intranet showing the different modules available to users of the hosted service.

As you would expect, small and medium-sized business make up the primary customers for Intranets.com. Many use it to collaborate with remote offices, and find hosted applications an inexpensive way to do the job. "In many cases they don't have the infrastructure to do it themselves," said Rick Faulk, CEO of Intranets.com, adding that the main competition for his company's hosted services comes from companies building their own VPN and handling the security. The biggest advantage Intranets.com has against such solutions is its time to market, Faulk said. It takes just minutes to set up an intranet with the service.

In addition to small companies, big names have also found the answer to their collaboration products in Intranets.com. The company's largest customer is NASA, which used Intranets.com as the main repository for content and information relating to the Columbia accident investigation. Other customers with nationwide reputations include The Home Depot and Johns Hopkins.

Both large and small customers will likely find a use for the new Web conferencing feature Intranets.com has launched. Intranets.com partnered with Netspoke for the conferencing application, which will be branded as part of the Intranets.com suite. In addition to Web and audio conferencing, the application will include slide sharing, application sharing, whiteboarding, live chat, polling, and Q&A features.

Intranets.com is also doing its best to make the conferencing application affordable, lest its loyal base of small business customers be outpriced. The company is offering Web and audio conferencing at $99.95 for 25 concurrent seats for customers who sign up before April 30. Each additional seat will go for $5. After April 30th, standard pricing will be $199.95 for 25 concurrent seats and $10 for each additional concurrent seat selected beyond the first 25.

"The integration of Web conferencing into an intranet for one-button access — at $100 per month to have 25 simultaneous users... That pricing is unheard of," Leavitt said.

The monthly calendar view of an Intranets.com calendar. The calendar application will be enhanced in March to include softer graphics, a new interface, and architectural changes.

In March, Intranets.com will roll out enhancements to its calendar application, which is one of its most heavily used applications. The changes will include a new user interface with softer graphics, architectural changes (it will be written in .NET), and the addition of group scheduling.

Group scheduling will allow users to send invitations that require a reply or notifications (no reply) about events, and will sync with Palm devices or Microsoft Outlook.

In addition to conferencing and the calendar, Intranets.com's Document Library is another popular application. It uses a traditional folder hierarchy structure and allows users to drag-and-drop documents from the desktop for sharing and collaboration.

The Task Manager Task Manager, which also syncs with Palm or Outlook, can be used to create tasks for yourself or others and send notices to people who have tasks assigned to them.

A Discussion Forum application allows for asynchronous brainstorming among users. And the Database applications has a SQL backend, and uses wizards to create databases in addition to custom jobs.

Group scheduling will be added to the Intranets.com calendar application in March. It will allow people to send meeting invitations and notices for meetings and check availability.