The explosion of the World Wide Web is due to the world-wide acceptance
of a common transport (TCP/IP), server standard (HTTP), and markup
language (HTML).  Many corporations have discovered that these same
technologies can be used for internal client/server applications with
the same ease that they are used on the Internet.  Thus was born the
concept of the "Intranet": the use of Internet technologies for
implementing internal client/server applications.

One key advantage of Web-based intranets is that the problem of managing
code on the client is greatly reduced.  Assuming a standard browser on
the desktop, all changes to user interface and functionality can be done
by changing code on the HTTP server.  Compare this with the cost of
updating client code on 2,000 desktops.

A second advantage is that if the corporation is already using the
Internet, no additional code needs to be licensed or installed on client
desktops.  To the user, the internal and external information servers
appear integrated.

A rapidly-disappearing disadvantage is that there is limited ability to
provide custom coding on the client.  In the early days of the Web,
there were limited ways of interacting with the client.  The Web was
essentially "read-only".  With the release of code tools such as Java
and JavaScript, this limitation is no longer a major issue.