Intranet Case Studies

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 NSTDA INTRANET PROFILE

Prepared by Navi Radjou , IT Consultant, NSTDA
Copyright (c) 1996 NSTDA Central Office

COMPANY

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Briefly describe your company.

Thailand's National Science & Technology Development Agency, or NSTDA, is an autonomous funding and research organization established in 1991. Located in Bangkok, it operates under the policy guidance of its Board, chaired by the Minister of Science, Technology and Environment of Thailand. It undertakes a broad-based, systematic approach towards enhancing the entire science and technology system of Thailand in support of national economic and social development. Three national centers operate under NSTDA: National Center for Electronics and Computer Technology (NECTEC); National Center for Metal and Materials Technology (MTEC) and National Center for Genetic and Biotechnology (BIOTEC).

NSTDA was established to be the main "driving force" for rapid science and technology development in Thailand. In this endeavor NSTDA has the dual role of both supporting and implementing such development. Support is given to both public and private sectors and includes research funding, information services, institutional strengthening and other activities that lead to the harnessing of appropriate S&T for social and economic benefits. Humans resources are developed through a substantial number of scholarships, both local and overseas. NSTDA also carries out in-house RD&E and provides a wide range of services such as technical services, consultancy, and training courses.

A tripartite co-operation between the private sector (technology user), the academic institutions (technology generator) and NSTDA (facilitator) is the main aim of these activities. The creation of NSTDA brings under one roof a funding office and three national research centers specialized in biotechnology, metal and materials technology and electronics and computer technology.

Among our achievements:

• we established Thailand's first Internet access service [Thaisarn] in 1992
• we recently signed an agreement with the prestigious US-based M.I.T for cooperation in eight S&T areas
• our organization earned the ISO 9000 certification in 1995
• we established our own research laboratories in electronics, materials and biotechnology and are constructing Thailand's first Science Park (to be completed in 1998)
• from our initiative, the Government proclaimed 1995 the Year of Thai Information Technology, which saw the launching of long term IT policies, and various measures to promote IT for public benefit
• we launched the Graduate Research and Education Consortium (GREC) to strengthen Ph.D. and M.S. programs of various Thai universities. International participants include: University of Waterloo, NCSC, MIT, Cray Inc. etc..

When was it founded?

It was established under the "Science and Technology Development Act of B.E 2534" (1991) on December 30, 1991.

What are your products and services?

Not applicable. The present goals of NSTDA are the three "I" s, that is, to Induce, Implement, and Invest.

• NSTDA induces RD&E by giving support in three main areas, viz.: biotechnology, metal and materials technology and electronics and computer technology.
• Implementation involves in-house RD&E in these three areas, preferably on demand from industry, and services to meet industry's needs.
• Investment is envisaged to include technology upgrading of the private sector, S&T commercialization and investment in technology ventures.

Who are your customers?

Not applicable. Our non-profit activities aim to benefit the Thai society at large without discrimination. We benefit the general public by:

• promoting and supporting activities which allow for technology transfer with international organizations in an effort to develop local technologies in Thailand
• by conducting exploratory research for the establishment of science & technology policy and planning for Thailand
• by providing scholarships and fellowships to Thai scholars who wish to study or conduct research abroad. We also maintain a program of reverse brain drain to lure home Thai expatriates [mostly scientists]
  

How large is the company (e.g., revenues, assets controlled, units sold, etc.)?

Our annual budget for the year 1995 was 1050 million baht (US$ 42 million).
85 % of our funding comes from the Government of Thailand. The rest comes from fees for training, international grants and returns from R&D.

How widespread are you geographically?

Even though our main offices are located in Thailand, NSTDA has set up a research cooperation framework which encompasses several universities and research centers throughout Thailand. Besides, we have signed several cooperation agreements with many international institutions (M.I.T is the latest one). Finally, we maintain a very strong linkage with ATPAC [the Association of Thai Professionals in America and Canada], ATPIJ [in Japan], ATPER [in Europe].

How many people does the company employ?

600 people today; 1100 people in year 2000

Describe your company's information systems before you adopted an Internet/Intranet strategy.

Most of our computers have been used as standalone. They are all connected to a network, but mainly to run department-specific workgroup applications, and to access the Internet through our gateway server. Our Finance department for instance disposes of its own private LAN running Netware 4.1, isolated from the rest. We rarely used shared documents over the network and groupware applications were non-existent. Besides, we did not use any organization-wide client-server application (group scheduling, distributed databases etc..). Moreover, because our Information Systems were heterogeneous (Unix, Windows, Macintosh) we also suffered from hardware/software interoperability headache. Finally, our Director did never benefit from the famous "executive's bird's eye view" of his organization's information systems since they were completely compartimentized. This definitely upset our decision-makers since all vital information to coordinate our business processes was never timely available from all sources, at least not accessible using a single front-end tool [a browser]. Everybody was so far convinced that the "one-point information access center" concept that everybody talked about was a pipe dream.

What business/economic forces led your company to seek alternatives to existing systems?

• Metcalfe Law on Networks' potential: we realized that internal communication and collaboration could greatly be enhanced if all our computers, instead of working as standalone, became nodes of an organization-wide network through which information from all sources can flow seamlessly.
• The Web revolution and the emergence of Open Standards: we realized that whatever alternative solution we seek for our existing systems, it should be based on Open Systems. We wanted our future products to comply with Open Standards, and to provide cross-platform operability. Finally, they should not lock us into any single solution or provider -- namely Microsoft which already dominates the O.S market.
• Our Director: because he was extremely techno-friendly with a good vision, he had intuitively understood the benefits of the Internet. But when I explained to him that we can harness many more benefits (better communication, collaboration etc..) by deploying the same web technologies on our internal network, he bought the idea straight away, and has since then become an enthusiastic supporter of our Intranet project.
• Long-term perspective: we realized that if we cannot improve our existing Information Systems today in our 7-storey building, the situation could well become unsolvable when we move to our 80-acre science park offices in 1998 !!
• The emergence of Intranets: we were aware of the looming revolution and did not want to miss the boat [Zona research predicts 3 out of 4 web servers in 2000 will be running on an Intranet]. We wanted to tab on the unique opportunity to leapfrog stages of Information Systems development by establishing from scratch a brand-new Intranet which does not suffer from the burden of providing access to legacy systems. We decided to espouse wholeheartedly the network-centric applications paradigm, the third avatar of the client-server model.

What were your technical and business goals for the new environment?

Our Intranet aims to achieve four main objectives:

• better informed employees:  by providing access to information from all sources, the Intranet could help our staff become aware of all events occurring in our highly structured organization. Besides, a regular multimedia-rich column authored by our Director will keep all our staff in synch with the "view from the top".
• better communication: we wanted to slowly get rid of the archaic internal routing slips and post-its and usher in the e-mail communication model to exchange ideas and solve problems.
• better collaboration: through group-scheduling, on-line conferencing etc.. we expect our staff to break the geographical and departmental barriers and become active members of a virtual community. Real-time audio and video technologies could play here the role of enablers.
• seamless cross-platform application access: whether they use Macintosh or Windows, our staff would be able to dynamically query our databases and get information on employee benefits, our international partners, our on-going research projects etc..All this simply by using the "point-and-click" mecanism provided by Netscape Navigator.

APPLICATION/SYSTEM (answer for both internet and intranet)

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Briefly give an overview of how Netscape products are being used at your company.

We have been using Netscape Navigator for the past 1 year.
After test-driving Netscape SuiteSpot 2.0 servers for > 3 months we plan to purchase them within the next month.
We plan to use Netscape products in the following manner:

What is the primary application of your internet site? intranet site? What business function do these applications serve? Approximately how many users are pariticipating in your internet site (average daily hits, too)? intranet site? who are the users of each site?

Our current and future Internet site's main vocation is to inform the Thai and international community about our deep commitment in improving the science and technology infrastructure of Thailand. Our intranet site will provide to our staff on-stop application access, and improve their communication and collaboration capacity. Our main objective is to mask to our staff the frontier between the intranet and the Internet so that they can use Netscape Navigator to transparently access any information regardless of its source.

Describe the configuration of your internet site and your intranet site (server location, network environment, ateways, operating system, communications link etc.). What hardware, software, interfaces, etc.?

Who were your partners for this solution?

Our Intranet and our Internet web site(s) are being designed and will be maintained 100% by our own internal staff. This is a matter of great pride for us. When I joined NSTDA and was assigned the mission of setting up our intranet, the first thing I noticed is that we had in-house all the right skills to set up a successful Internet/intranet web site: graphics whiz-kids, multimedia experts, publishing professionals etc.. All I needed to do was to tab into all these creative energies and channel them into designing our web site. So I included them in our Web Team [called NSTDA Web Task Force] and informed them about the benefits of "electronic publishing" and the "intranet". I also trained them intensively on web authoring, and showed them how they can serve their original publications in their native format (using PDF for PageMaker files, MS-Word viewer for MS-Word documents etc..). I was really touched by the enthusiasm displayed by our in-house publication and presentation professionals in helping me set up our intranet and internet web site...

Besides we are lucky to have 2 American citizens in our Web Team who are doing a great job:

• John Wagner, from Columbus (Ohio) is bilingual. He helps us translate contents from Thai into English before we publish them on the Internet. Right now John is helping us prepare our Annual Report in English in PDF format.
• Christopher Johnson, also from Ohio. Chris, a multimedia expert who served in the Peace Corp. and worked for NIH in the U.S., uses Macromedia Director and Backstage to enliven our web pages by integrating multimedia-rich contents. Using Director, he is now developing a multimedia presentation for our 5-th anniversary celebrations -- anyone with Netscape Navigator and Shockwave plug-in could then enjoy his presentation.

We followed Gartner Group's advice on the need of building an architectural and operational framework when planning for a WWW and EWW sites. We especially concentrated on the human resources aspect of the project. I spent a lot of time lobbying my Director to have him accept my Intranet plan. When it was finally approved, I have to sell it to the "shop-floor". Moreover, I spent all my energy playing the "technical evangelist" and training our staff in web authoring and net surfing. I think it's finally starting to pay off: our web team's authoring skills have greatly matured and we are proud to announce soon that "our Internet and Intranet sites were 100% designed for and by NSTDA staff".

If your intranet accesses legacy data, what kind of data and how did you implement this?

We do not have any legacy data per se. However we plan to set up databases (address book, employee records, experts databases) which could be accessed on our Intranet using Netscape Navigator. In the short term, we plan to use web data access tools like Cold Fusion from Allaire. Our long term plan is however to use LiveWire Pro to develop Javascript applications which achieve exactly that: our developers are right now undergoing training in Java and Javascript.

How were you doing things before you acquired Netscape's technology?

As I explained before, we use the telephone and the archaic internal routing slips to communicate to each other. We essentially use the Fax to contact our international peers !! To schedule a team meeting for instance, I had to physically contact all members involved !! On the application side, we tried to use MS-Access on the front-end and MS-SQL Server as back-end database server. However it turned out that our Director could not access the data because he is using a Macintosh and MS-Access does not run on Macs !!
We believe our intranet, based on Netscape products, will help us overcome all these arcane interoperability issues !!

What business benefits do you expect to achieve (or have you already achieved) with your Netscape applications?

• enhance internal communication and collaboration : we believe that information is power. The better informed our staff, the more impressive their collective contribution !!
• make access to information a pleasure and fun: the point-and-click approach offered by Netscape Navigator is bound to "convert" even the most conservative of our staff who are still "wary" of the computers [technophobic]
• offer an uniform, consistent, cross-platform front-end to access all corporate applications [finance, human resources, RD&E etc.] no matter where they are located. We should finally be able to get rid of the information "islands".
• provide our decision-makers up-to-date information in a timely and user-friendly manner.

Are you using or planning to deploy Netscape's Navigator and server products for mail, groupware?

We have been using Netscape Navigator for the past 13 months and plan to standardize Netscape Communicator as the multipurpose intranet front-end tool when it is available. We already use Netscape news server for private conferencing. We also plan to use Netscape Mail Server as our SMTP and POP server [from 12/96]

We are agerly expecting your Calendar Server to finally provide group scheduling service to our staff. With your Collabra server providing document sharing, we should be able to get rid of that old manual document routing process.

Are you using or planning to use Java for applications?

We have been using Java applets so far only to create "animation" and enliven our web pages. We realize though the full potential of this powerful cross-plaform language and aim to take the most out of the "write-once, run anywhere" development paradigm that Java ushered in.

Describe other Netscape applications that are currently online, or that are expected to come online during the next year.

• One short-term application we are developing right now is a web presentation for our Fifth Anniversary Celebrations. We are creating dynamic web pages using Java, Macromedia Director and QuickTime which "embed" animation and audio-video directly into HTML files. We are going to set up various "information booths" with computers running Netcape Navigator to showcase NSTDA's achievements and contribution to the Thailand scientific community. We will also "serve" this presentation on-line over our Internet. I promise to send you the URL of this presentation as soon as it is available.
  
• We also use Netscape News Server to set up informal newsgroups which could act as knowledge repositories. For example, the foreign consultants in NSTDA could consult their private newsgroup to check how their predecessors overcame an administrative problem (e.g., immigration hussles). We even plan to set up a newsgroup exlusively for pregnant female staff so that they could exchange worries, tips etc.. which could be consulted by other mothers-to-be !! Finally we use "ad-hoc" newsgroups whose life cycle cover that of a specific project [e.g., setting up the Internet Firewall]
  
• I started putting my consultant progress reports on-line since early 1996. My executives now can access them, as well as other documents such as proposals, agreements etc.,. from their private web site (called "NSTDA C.E.O Only")

(what kind of database, if it's in one, and any special features. Do the same with all apps mentioned)

I plan to develop a simple Javascript application for our International Relations Department. It should help our staff to send complex queries to a MS-SQL Server database and find in real-time who are the biotechnology experts in Canada who conduct research on "Thalasemia" [for example]

Did you adapt these from existing applications, and if so, what were the apps in their previous form, and what issues did those pose?

No. we have been writing them from scratch [so we do not have the burden of legacy applications]

FUTURE PLANS (answer for both internet and intranet)

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What are your long-range plans for your Internet/Intranet system? What is the company's vision? How does Netscape fit in?

Our company's vision (strongly suppored by our Director) is to make our Intranet the knowledge repository of our organization. So that whenever our staff need any type of information, their first reflex should be to jump to their computer and consult the Internal Web Site. We also believe that our staff would become better "communicators" by capitalizing on the e-mail, conferencing, and other groupware services provided by Netscape products.

To make our intranet project a big success we are going to apply the [adapted] Metcalfe's Law: "The value of an Intranet is proportional to the number of applications, servers, and users cubed" (thanks, Ryan). In other words we are going to "let one hundred servers blossom" !! We plan to deploy as many information servers as it takes to empower everyone to share information across our enterprise.

What makes us optimistic is that all department directors intuitively understand the benefits of the Intranet: but, as good professionals, they want to "see to believe". So we plan to develop a series of web prototypes [templates] specific to each department (human resources, finance, RD&E..) and demonstrate them to their "owners". If they are satisfied we will assign one person in their service as the local "web author" and train him/her in how to "feed" their portion of the intranet site. Initially our intranet will work as a centralized repository, but we will gradually "loose the grip" once all our staff become familiar with web authoring.

Besides, because we will soon be running our Intranet on an ATM-backbone we could afford such fantasies as on-line conferencing, real-time audio/video, byte-serving of heavy PDF files etc.. to captivate our users attention and glue them to their screen.

Netscape products fit nicely in this vision because:

• any novice user can now do web authoring using Navigator Gold 3.0 !!
• using Fastrack Server, any department user can set up a web server as long as he runs a PC with WIN'95 !!
• the administration of Netscape servers is flexible: for example I can set up a new Mail client account from any PC thanks to the remote administration functionality !!
• they are inexpensive: thanks to the non-profit program, we are entitled to 80% discount on all Netcape products

What applications (other than those mentioned above) are and on the drawing board for the future?

• an Executive Information System using Business Objects or some other EIS software. The new generation of decision-support tools are getting more and more intranet-friendly and allow data-querying and data-drilling using a standard browser. By simply pointing and clicking on his Netscape Navigator, our Director could then query our databases and generate complex financial reports, without having to know any SQL syntax. We have already set up the "NSTDA Executives Home Page" specifically tailored for our senior executives.
• we are interested in visual-development tools like Borland's Intrabuilder to design our future JavaScript applications. The current hard-coding approach of Javascript is still scaring away some of our developers !! 
  
  

Do you plan to purchase additional Netscape products? Approximately what is the timeline?

As I mentioned before, we plan to migrate to SuiteSpot 3.0 servers as soon as they are available in early 1997. We are particularly interested in the Media Server, Calendar Server and Collabra Server. We will start using Netcape Communicator as soon as it is available in 1997.

RESULTS/COMMENTS  (answer for both internet and intranet)

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What business benefits have you gained from your Netscape system? How have Netscape systems and products helped you to achieve your business goals? (State results quantitatively if possible)

• We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in publications (annual report, scientific publications). Upset, my Director ushered in the "Electronic PR" projet: by the end of 1998, all our publications should be on-line on our Internet and intranet !! Because Netscape Servers and Browser allow you to access documents not only in HTML format, but also in MS-Office, PDF and other intermediary format, our task is greatly simplified.
  
• We expect Netscape products to enhance our communication and collaboration skills. For example, using Netscape Collabra Server, we can set up an "ad-hoc" private newsgroup to help our Director collaborate on-line with his assistants in managing a specific project. What took 2 weeks to achieve could now be handled within 3 days !!
  
• Even though it is not tangible, one benefit provided by Navigator Gold is the feeling that every and each employee contributes to the intranet. Whether they publish their dog's picture or a technical report on it, we believe that their collective efforts enforce the community sense among our staff : no surprise the first application in our Intranet was the "Bulleting Board" !! We predict our intranet to become a family business.
  

(monetary figures or specific productivity gains or other tangible benefits.)

• right now, our publication guys spend around 10 US$ per Annual Report. Once we start serving it in PDF format over the Internet (using Enterprise Server), we expect to bring down that cost to < 25 cents !! 
  
• previously it took us 2 days to arrange a big meeting. We hope with the group scheduling features in the future Netscape products, we might be able to achieve it within hours.
  
• I recently set up a Job Announcement Web Site in just 1 week-end using Navigator Gold 3.0.
  Dozens of people have visited it within 2 days after we announced it.

Approximately how many users are participating in your internet and Intranet sites? On your external Web site, what are your hottest or most frequently visited locations?

• Intranet: > 300 users -- each of our centers is setting up its own Intranet
• Internet: right now, we do not receive too many hits per day. But things will dramatically change once we host our own Internet Server (SUN Netra) running SuiteSpot 3.0 (end of this year). We expect many visitors for our "Science Park Presentation", "MIT-NSTDA Consortium Page", "Scholarship-Fellowship Page" etc.. For example, we plan to provide a virtual tour of our future Science Park using QuickTime VR. Because Netscape Communicator will be integrating ShockWave plug-in, we also plan to animate our web pages with Macromedia Director creations.
  

What do you consider to be the most significant aspects or features of Netscape technology?

• cross-platform interoperability: the ability of accessing data from any source as long as you dispose of a Netscape Navigator
• comprehensiveness: Netscape SuiteSpot 3.0 intuitively offers all services & tools that one need to design, implement and manage a successful intranet web site.
• inexpensive: thanks to NSTDA-Netscape non-profit agreement, the purchasing costs of intranet products are slashed by 80 %
• based on open standards: unlike Microsoft, Netscape provides us an Intranet Architecture which could accommodate any other providers' products. As a customer we want to enjoy that freedom of choice.
  

What has employee reaction been to the intranet? (specific quotes)

I am proud to note that the response has so far been over-enthusiastic. Almost all our staff wants to learn web authoring and many of our executives intuitively understand the business advantages in setting up an Intranet. But I am lucky to have a visionary Director who threw his weight behind me in setting up our Web Team. We are also proud that our Intranet web site is an "indigenous" achievement: entirely designed by our own staff . Here are some "famous" quotes:

• "Navi, when can I register to your Web Authoring courses ??" [an excited colleague in PR]
• "Navi, can we publish our financial reports on-line so that our executives can read them with Netscape ??" [my Finance director]
• "Finally someone seems to scare to death Microsoft !!" [a colleague displeased with Microsoft's products]

What other aspects of your business operations, Netscape system, or general experience with Netscape would you like to mention?

• Regional Localisation: one thing that Netscape should urgently do is attack the Asian market. With the local IT markets growing at 40% on average, Netscape should roll out a Navigator which could support local languages [and fonts]. Microsoft for example recently released in Thailand their IE in Thai Edition which supports Unicode fonts. All local ISPs have already signed with Microsoft for IE, since Netscape does not support Thai fonts yet
  
• Remote publishing & Administration: I am very satisfied that many software products can now be remotely administered using Netscape Navigator. I can for example, from my desktop, control my Internet Server (SUN Netra i), my SuiteSpot intranet servers, my Firewall system etc.. all using my favorite Netscape Navigator.
  
• Customer services & technical support: we appreciate how fast your help desk solved some of our technical problems. Besides, your education non-profit people [Ms. Melissa Attard] were extremely nice with us and helped us enroll in the non-profit program without pain.
  

Is there anything new that has happened or will happen soon with your Netscape application(s)? Any milestones that the application itself or your company has achieved ?

• We intend to throw a big party for our Fifth Anniversary celebrations in 12/96. We are developing a big promotional clip using Macromedia tools and Navigator Gold 3.0. It will be running on our Internet web site. We plan to use several computers with Netscape Navigator to showcase our achievements through this clip.
  
• We will also set up several workshops to present our Intranet and Internet web sites, and explain how we used Netscape products to build them. Hands-on web authoring demonstrations will also be held.
  
• And of course, once you publish our customer profile, we plan to inform local Newspapers to announce it !! 

LESSONS LEARNED

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Based on your experience so far, do you have any recommendations you might make to other companies pursuing/deploying an intranet strategy?

• Importance of achieving buy-out from Management: garner all support you can from the top-floor: the upper management should make it clear that it supports your efforts, and that it considers a companywide Intranet to be an important strategic tool of the organization. Otherwise, you will fail to to impress rank-and-file employees in the benefits of the web technologies and have them actively use them. In our case, we were extremely lucky to have a visionary and techno-friendly Director who used his excellent communication skills to sell the Intranet idea to the shop-floor.

• With the backing of the top management, set up early an internal Intranet Web Team which includes in-house professionals (graphic designers, IS people, publications guys, end-user community etc..). The major missions of this "vanguard team" should be:
  
  
• play the technical evangelists and promote the internal use of web technology
• develop standards and templates for web page design
• identify, test and promote tools for web authoring, HTML conversion and intranet deployment
• advise departments on innovative ways to apply web technology to their specific applications
  
  
• Plan, Plan, Plan: Create first a centralized directory service [HTML File System] for your web site with the help of the various departments and services. Then train them on how to maintain their portion of the web site: but use the Access Control features of N. Enterprise Server to restrict people from publishing nowhere else but their own directories. The risk is if you let people go off and do their own thing on an intranet web site, it will lead only to chaos.

• Make web authoring funny: most training centers here in Thailand mostly offer training in "HTML editing", rarely in "web authoring". So people are little bit "scared" about web authoring. But after you demonstrate them how they can use the WYSIWYG Navigator Gold 3.0 to easily generate multimedia rich web pages in just minutes, they will feel empowered and quickly start contributing to your intranet contents.

• Attack the in-house "publications" department. Ours has several graphics geniuses, presentation gurus. With the advent of web technologies, everybody knows that sooner or later the "publications" dpt be renamed "On-line Information Services". What better way for those professionals to make a smooth transition to that era than by using heir talent to design the Intranet web site ??

• Don't try to HTML-ize everything: but rather web-ify it. The bottom line is that if your intranet HTTP server and client can understand a specific format -- whatever it is -- then go ahead and use it. Thanks to Netscape Navigator you can browse documents in virtually any format --not necessary in HTML format-- using: a) plug-ins  b) helper applications  c) intermediary formats (e.g., PDF). If you want to preserve the documents in their original format, in case you cannot convert them into HTML, that's fine: serve them "fresco".

• Best book on Intranet: I strongly advise any organization willing to set up an Intranet to read Ryan Bernard's excellent book "The Corporate Intranet". Frankly, this is the most comprehensive book I have ever seen on this topic. Ryan's book not only helped me tackle several technical issues but also the managerial and organizational hurdles that are associated in setting up an internal web site. It's a must for Intranet Web Masters !! 

• Follow Gartner Group's prediction - "Start with information publishing" : the cornerstone of any Intranet project is information publishing. It's simple, easy and inexpensive. Later you can add communication, collaboration , and finally application access services. Don't burn the steps by reversing this order.

Intranet Case Studies
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