Virtual offices help businesspeople share ideas

Springfield area businesses and organizations can now benefit from a new technology literally at their fingertips.

Virtual offices, also known as intranets, are enabling groups ranging from a few people to collaboratives of unlimited size to share information and ideas through the Internet.

"A virtual office is an online tool that provides a place where a group can collaborate, whether it's a business, team or organization," said Rick Faulk, vice president of marketing for Intranets.com.

Features

By subscribing to a virtual office service, individuals and companies can gain access to a Web site offering such services as file sharing, group calendars and scheduling, encrypted e-mail, chat rooms, bulletin boards, teleconferencing, instant messaging, database access, directories of members and contacts, document storage and retrieval, and the use of software.

The virtual office, however, is not necessarily a replacement for the traditional brick-and-mortar office building.

As Faulk put it, "It's just another tool to make you more productive, whether you have people working in one location or multiple locations."

Even if all employees work in one location, a virtual office can come in especially handy in unusual circumstances, such as inclement weather.

During a snowstorm, for example, it would enable snowbound employees to work from their homes with full access to documents and full communication with coworkers and customers.

Intranets.com is the world's largest and fastest-growing provider of Web-based intranets.

Since the company was launched in August 1999, Faulk said, more than 350,000 groups, including businesses, professional associations, nonprofit organizations, and even families have created their own private, secure intranet sites through Intranets.com.

Benefits

An intranet offers both tangible and intangible benefits, Faulk said.

Cost saving, time saving and improved productivity are some of the tangible benefits, while intangible benefits can include better decision making, increased collaboration, and improved knowledge sharing.

Based in Woburn, Mass., Intranets.com has European headquarters in the Netherlands and another operation in Japan, Faulk said.

When its leading competitor, HotOffice, went out of business Dec. 19, customers were redirected to Intranets.com. Faulk said he estimates that several thousand former HotOffice customers have switched over to his company, adding to the already large number of users.

Intranets.com was adequately prepared for the high volume of groups using its services, said Faulk.

"We built this system with the understanding that we would have millions of users, and each site can handle 1,000 users," he said.

The need

Intranet services may soon be in even greater demand, if a December 2000 survey conducted by Modalis Research Technologies is any indication.

In the survey of small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as government and non-profit organizations, 70 percent of respondents said they perceived a need for an intranet system.

The main barrier respondents cited was concern about the cost of development and maintenance.

"Traditionally, these tools were only available to larger businesses because they cost so much to build," Faulk said. "Now, smaller businesses can benefit from free or inexpensive intranet systems."

Intranets.com. offers two options: "Free" intranet, supported by advertising, includes 25 MB of storage and a custom domain name, with no limit to the number of users.

A subscription intranet costs $19.95 per month for up to five users, $4 for each additional user, and is free of advertising and includes 50 MB of storage.

The Intranets.com Web site, where information can be found on how to set up a virtual office, is at www.intranets.com. Faulk said it takes less than five minutes for a user to set up a site.

Once the virtual office is established, he said, the next step is to invite members and populate the site with information.