The Essence of an Extranet

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E-BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT

MBL93GX

 ASSIGNMENT 01

                                      Topic 5.1 & 5.2

                   Mr. N Mlambo                        Student ID: 79078451

                        DUE: 11 JUNE 2018

QUESTION 1

The essence of An Extranet
An Intranet is an internal corporate network built using Internet and World Wide Web standards and products that allows employees of an organization to gain access to corporate information, in contrast, an Extranet is a network based on web technologies that links selected resources of the intranet of a company with its customers, suppliers, or other business partners.

An extranet is basically a private network designed specifically to allow these individuals (clients, vendors, suppliers, partners, etc.) to communicate with the organisation in a closed virtual space. Extranets serve an extremely important role, as they allow for private communication, collaboration, knowledge sharing, document sharing, and data transfer between organisations.

(Possible) relationship with cloud computing - Extranet
Fundamentally, hosting a company’s extranet on a cloud environment can yield several advantages which include guaranteed availability and service, disaster recovery and backup, and a flexible access model to allow stakeholders to access the system from anywhere.

Using a cloud solution for an extranet may suit some organisations which already work with a large extended network.  Where the organisation has the resources to deploy, manage and maintain a private cloud solution for an extranet then it certainly should.  They are likely to be cheaper in the long term to run.  In essence, a system such as this becomes the lifeblood of the organisation and the main artery for its stakeholders and customers to access the heart of the company.  If the system is down – the circulation stops.

The essence of Service-oriented architecture (SOA)
Although there is no standard of official definition for Service-oriented architecture, (IBM,2xxx) defines SOA as a business-centric IT architectural approach that supports integrating a business as linked, repeatable business tasks, or services. With that in mind, it is imperative to distinguish that SOA is not a product but is an architectural style.

Service-Oriented Architecture is an architectural style. Applications built using a SOA style deliver functionality as services that can be used or reused when building applications or integrating within the partners or trading partners