Intranets provide organizations with the ability to store information in an environment that is accessible only to the members of that organization. Traditionally, firewalls or security measures are put into place to keep outside visitors from accessing the Intranet portal or the systems connected to it.
Organizations often use Intranet portals as a common place where employees can collaborate, store/share corporate knowledge, and aggregate corporate applications into a common place for employees to work.
Some common attributes of an Intranet portal include access to corporate articles, knowledge bases, enterprise search capability, threaded discussions/forums, and social networking capabilities.
Organizations often see a return on investment with Intranets by providing their employees with the ability to find information more quickly, reduce their reliance on email, and decrease training times for new employees.