Your company belongs on the Internet

Communications News, March, 1994 by Morris Edwards

Suddenly everyone is talking about the Internet, the global network of networks that links millions of computers and users in more than 130 countries.

It's more than just talk. Internet is attracting some 150,000 new users each month, who join a population estimated at 16 million.

The majority of these new users are businesses seeking to tap Internet's wealth of resources for communications, information gathering and information distribution. According to the Internet Society, 30% of the Fortune 500 is already on the Internet, and two-thirds of Internet users work for major corporations.

Mary J. Cronin, author of Doing Business on the Internet ($29.95, Van Nostrand Reinhold), believes that connectivity equals competitiveness. "For companies seeking competitive advantage," she concludes, "Internet is an essential management resource."

Going beyond E-mail

The original Internet network was created in 1969 by the Pentagon to allow researchers working on military and other government projects to access large computer databases at various sites and to exchange information. Now Internet includes 1,500 regional and local networks in the U.S. and more than 3,000 network overseas.

Internet is growing faster than any other telecommunications system in history, including the telephone network. Part of Internet's staggering growth is attributable to people's perception of it as the precursor to, and prototype for, the "information superhighway," which the Clinton Administration has publicized.

An earlier boost came from the federal government's decision in 1991 to remove the restrictions limiting the network's use to research. This policy change opened the way for service provides to carry virtually any form of commercial traffif--apart from unsolicited junk mail, which is still regarded as heresy.

According to Cronin, most companies connect to the Internet for electronic mail, but then find that the network can help in virtually every aspect of their business, from research and development to manufacturing, marketing, sales and customer support.

"Whatever companies accomplish on the phone, which a fax machine or via overnight express," she says, "they can probably do some of it more effectively and a lot less expensively over the Internet."

Some organizations are capitalizing on Internet's use of the TCP/IP protocols to connect remote offices in a "virtual corporate network." Low connection costs make Internet an attractive alternative to building and maintaining proprietary wide area networks (WANs). Also, Internet provides the vehicle for going beyond internal networks to provide a link with suppliers, customers and even competitors.

Internet uses three applications protocols based on TCP/IP to simplify global internetworking. Electronic mail applications use the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol; Telnet allows users to log on to remote computers and on-line systems, and files may be transferred using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

Security is clearly an issue with Internet WANs. Some companies supplement the normal password protection schemes with "firewalls" -- hardware, software and sometimes physical breaks between their Internet gateways and LANs. A more complete solution may come from Micro-electronics and Computer Technology Corp., of Austin, Texas, which recently introduced a set of business and security services for Internet LANs. Known as Enterprise Integration Network (EINet), it provides for authentiation, access control, directory searching, electronic remittance and multimedia E-mail, giving Internet WANs many of the capabilities of closed proprietary networks.

It is relatively easy and inexpensive to gain indirect access to Internet's E-mail services such as Compuserve, America On-Line and MCI Mail. For direct connection to Internet, you can choose from a variety of national, regional and local service suppliers.

The bulletin board services are organized by subject matter into about 5,000 "news groups," which receive messages and news articles of interest via a system called USENET. For tapping its vast databases, Internet offers a number of browsing and search programs that help users find and transfer data widely dispersed on the network. Another useful feature is the means for collaborative computing among teams from different workgroups, divisions and even organizations connected only by the network.

With Internet's databases and array of data services, it will soon be unthinkable for an organization not to be connected. Now is the time to explore Internet and its business benefits before user questions and demands start to mount.

Data communications consultant Morris Edwards serves as program chairman of the Network Computing Solutions Conference and Exposition, or NetCom, which will be held at the Radisson Centre in Miami March 8-10.