A growing worldwide trend towards the creation of Enterprise Portals is being driven by the need for corporates to interface online with a community which includes the corporate`s own personnel, its trading partners, customers and suppliers.
So says Janice Kallmeyer, GM of GoZone, a new 24-hour trusted online trading environment, who points out that enabling these different users to enter the online environment of the community they are accessing can be a complex undertaking.
"It requires the seamless interconnectivity of a corporate`s Intranet, Extranet and Internet users to a centralised, profiled environment where users can see only the business content relevant to their needs," she explains.
The GoZone - an electronic business gateway for companies to connect with one another, gain access to business relevant information and to their business applications - has been designed to meet this challenge.
The GoZone is an e-business infrastructure platform which allows only authorised companies and their personnel to interconnect and transact with one another in complete confidentiality across the different infrastructural entry points of the Intranet, Extranet and Internet.
"Operating on the OmniLink Quality-of-Service VPN, the GoZone enables corporates residing on the VPN to extend their intranet sites, facilitating direct connections to trading partners via leased lines. It allows access to that community through a password protected and firewalled environment," she explains. The intranet or corporate network, and the extranet are thus "merged". "Traditional concerns about extranet connections into a corporate network, including security issues, are addressed by routing these through the GoZone business gateway.
"Normally, when connectivity to a corporate network is opened to trading partners, one must ensure that the correct security around that interconnectivity is in place through the implementation of demilitarised zones and firewalling. This infrastructure forms an integral part of the GoZone," Kallmeyer adds.
An example of how the GoZone can be used successfully to link a corporate intranet and extranet is the linking of the Nampak intranet, the Works to certain of the Group`s employee benefit partners.
According to Paddy Slattery, IT manager at Nampak, working through the GoZone effectively extended the Nampak intranet into a secure virtual extranet.
"The partners can now provide Nampak-specific content and applications in real-time to Nampak employees through The Works. Connectivity to the partners` content and applications is seamless. To users, it appears as if this resides on The Works.
"It has provided us with a robust mechanism to connect current and future Nampak partners to our intranet while minimising our administrative load. Indeed, we have achieved instant entry to a business-to-business e-commerce environment, with minimal investment in technology or the difficulties usually associated with installing the infrastructure required to link to trading partners," he adds.
Finally, the GoZone can be used to offer a seamless connection into a corporate`s online initiatives to and from the greater World Wide Web as the Internet provides the maximum reach to the consumer.
"The GoZone is geared to provide essential profiling and personalisation of visitors to the enterprise gateway. No matter which mechanism of connectivity the community uses to transact or communicate with one another, they must see a view that is relevant to their business use," Kallmeyer concludes.
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