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The biggest winner in Intranet Journal's first annual Product of the Year awards was the away team, because Intranet Dashboard, based in Melbourne, Australia, swept two categories. It won for Best Intranet Design Software and Best Hosted Intranet Solution, beating such names as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Vialect IntraNet, HyperOffice, and Central Desktop.

Intranet Dashboard is currently used in 46 countries by more than 500 clients, including the Shell Group, Adidas, and Fantastic Sams. The clients appreciate Intranet Dashboard's unified approach, ease of use, and rapid deployment. While the company has kept a fairly low profile in the U.S. so far, it's starting to crow about its comprehensive and elegant intranet solution.

We spoke with Campbell Dobbin, CEO of the Adweb Agency, the company behind Intranet Dashboard. The company didn't start out to create excellent intranet package; it actually started in 1995 as a full-service Web design agency, but business in intranet creation soared since the agency was the only one in Australia specializing in them. When Dobbin and his coworkers saw that 90 percent of their intranet clients were looking for the same features, they realized that they could build an intranet template and sell it to many clients.

Intranet Dashboard is a new concept in intranet tools, says Dobbin. Its unified approach lets users get all the internal applications they need from one source, and it offers one search tool that covers all the contents. While other solutions require users to piece together different systems, Dobbin says, Intranet Dashboard offers everything from one source. As a result, buyers can get a custom intranet up and running quickly.

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Intranet Dashboard has risen quickly in the few years since it was released, and is now used by some of the world's biggest firms. Just before the Beijing Olympics, Adidas, the major sponsor, contacted Intranet Dashboard to create a system that could store assets and documentation related to the games. At the time, Intranet Dashboard didn't have a presence in China, but Adidas wanted support nearby. Adweb obliged, and now China is a big market for Intranet Dashboard.

Another enterprise client, the Shell Group, has what Dobbin thinks is the world's largest single application Web site, an intranet that 130,000 employees use every day.

"Intranet Dashboard has been instrumental in the consolidation and standardization of our intranet," said Andrew Fix, Intranet Manager at Shell International B.V. "Our focus has been, and will continue to be about simplification of the intranet, to increase usability and business benefit. Consolidating legacy intranet environments onto ID has not only reduced costs, but made these costs much more transparent."

Travelscene American Express, an Australian travel agency chain, is also a pleased customer. "Intranet Dashboard, has provided the most effective and easy to use intranet solution for our business," said James Gaskell, head of Technology Strategy. "With 5,000 users currently and that number set to increase, Intranet Dashboard provides a single vendor solution which has empowered our employees and our business to rollout group wide across the organization internationally."

Despite its success, Intranet Dashboard and Adweb won't be resting anytime soon. The upcoming version 2 of the program, available in March, will offer big improvements, says Dobbin, including dynamic linking (allowing companies to shift major content areas without breaking links), and a document version control system with check-in/check-out abilities. All totaled, version 2 will offer over 40 new tools.

Many of the improvements were suggested by clients, says Dobbin, and that's partly why Intranet Dashboard has been so successful.

"When we find a lot of clients asking for the same thing, we just put it in the software," Dobbin says. "That's why we have such a large and happy client base."

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