Extranet

Extranet is a term coined to describe an online collaboration space, shared by people who may come from different organisations. It is derived from 'intranet', a collaboration space used within large corporations. Extranets can help a group of organisations to share information and resources. Extranets may also incorporate:

group calendars – which could be used to book rooms or equipment, or plan group meetings.
event alerts – these can alert people when meetings are coming up, or when deadlines are close

Some Extranets use specialist software but others can be accessed via the web using a web browser like Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.

Pros

Hosted externally from organisation, no server hardware or software required
Can be accessed from anywhere

Cons

Internet connection required to access information
Needs to be used to be useful

Beware

Every extranet is different - needs to be carefully designed
Expensive to set up but there are cheap options

Case-study on the use of an extranet: DirectSupport

DirectSupport is a free guidance and mentoring service for UK online centres, focusing mainly on community and voluntary centres. UK online centres are community-based centres giving local access to computers, internet and email to those who would not otherwise be able to get online.

The DirectSupport Extranet is a web based collaboration system.There are collaboration areas which function like a set of shared email boxes. Messages and files can be sent in, read, forwarded, replied to and files downloaded by all subscribers to the extranet.

It provides a very cost effective solution in that it brings together a complete package of solutions for communication and information sharing needs for a dispersed group of people. As people join the group they are given access to the extranet and can immediately see all previous activity. In contrast, frequently changing groups are very difficult to manage if you are just using email.

View the full DirectSupport case study

Further reading: Wikipedia