Companies set up intranets to distribute and share documents and programs among employees. Companies with many facilities located in different areas tend to extend intranets to all facilities by means of VPN (virtual private networks) where data travels encrypted through the web.
Intranets, often looking like portal websites, can count hundreds or even thousands of users when deployed in large companies or other organizations.
An intranet is the perfect place to concentrate, organize, and distribute the organization knowledge. Besides documents, intranets are likely to host Web Applications.
An intranet brings consistent benefits to all organizations. An interesting, and still undervalued, usage for an intranet is the installation of kiosk-like terminals within assembly facilities of manufacturing companies. Apart from making technical documentation available (drawings, assembling schemes, electrical diagrams, ...), web apps can be hosted to monitor the production in real time or to manage resources and materials requests.