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A quick search on Google for "extranet" will return approximately 1.5 million results. Sound like a lot? Do a comparable search for "intranet" and "Web site" and you'll come up with 7.6 million and 15 million, respectively. Needless to say, extranets are not as prominent or widely discussed as intranets or public Web sites.

Underappreciated though they may be, extranets are playing an increasingly important role in connecting companies with their customers, partners, vendors, and suppliers. Yet there's still confusion about what extranets are, the purposes they serve, and how they are most effectively deployed.

What is an extranet? Put simply, it's a Web site with access control, where some or all of the site visitors are coming from outside the firewall. Extranets are used for many different kinds of business applications. Sales extranets enable businesses to publish special content for major accounts or prospective customers. There are also B2B e-commerce extranets where custom "storefronts" are available to qualified business partners for product selection or pricing. Project management or collaborative extranets enable businesses to share documents, schedules, and digital assets associated with a specific project or partner.

Extranets essentially take the capabilities and purpose of an intranet and extend them beyond the organization. Successfully deployed, extranets can help organizations:

• Share up-to-date documents, files or images with suppliers, partners or customers in disparate locations

• Work collaboratively by making documents or digital assets available for editing, reviewing, updating, versioning and storing

• Manage projects in a centralized workspace and track the history of work

• Provide current versions of frequently updated documents like timely sales reports, inventory summaries, production schedules, product specifications, design documents, shipping schedules, etc.

• Provide access to back-office functions such as inventory management, warranty information, production or release schedules, asset directories, shared sales reports, etc.

Separating the 'Intra' from the 'Extra'

But let's take a step back. The differences between intranets and extranets are fairly significant. An intranet, of course, is designed for internal use within an organization, and typically serves a much broader purpose. An extranet is a Web site with restricted access that isn't internal to a company or organization, and typically serves a more specific purpose for a discrete group of users.

Sounds simple, right? Yes and no. In elucidating the points of difference, the critical nuances emerge:

• Extranets are for external audiences and, accordingly, are less likely to live behind the firewall.

• Extranets are likely to have unique user and access control requirements that are managed outside the organization's internal infrastructure.

• Intranets are built to last forever; extranets often have a limited lifespan.

• Extranets are more likely to have various permission levels or custom content for different types of users.

• Extranets will vary more widely across the organization, with specific extranets for specific purposes. Normally, there is only one intranet.

• Search most often occurs across the entire intranet but is usually isolated within discrete extranets.

• Extranets may have some of their content available to the public — without access restriction; intranets almost never do.

• Intranets are more likely to interact with back-office applications, but exposing a back-office application could be the sole purpose of an extranet; an intranet will almost always draw many different types of content from multiple sources.

• Different extranets might have different design characteristics, depending on the business partner, vendor, or client who is using the extranet.

• Extranets often need to be "cloned" for a new client or a new team, or created en masse for multiple teams or partners.

Pieces of the Puzzle: The Decisive Dozen

Having established that intranets and extranets can be quite different, the elements needed to create these applications, on the other hand, are actually very similar. It's the way those elements are put together that differs. There are a dozen basic pieces that a project team should have at the ready to launch an operational intranet or extranet; they include: