Intranet Or Client-Server?

<H1>Intranet Or Client-Server?</H1><B>T</B>ravel managers looking to implement a corporate-wide travel booking and management system face the choice between an intranet or traditional client-server implementation. Which is best? It depends on your needs.

The chief reason to install a travel management software application is to lower the cost of travel. This means enabling a corporation's employees to automatically book air, hotel and car reservations from their personal computers or workstations. With built-in constraints that match the corporate travel policy and up-to-the-minute reporting of transactions and costs, travel management software should ensure that corporations receive the most value from their travel purchases.

However, the technology underpinnings of most corporate information networks are constantly changing. Therefore, any corporate-wide application, like management, must adapt to the changing information landscape.

Over the past five years, most corporations have moved to a client-server environment. Now, intranets are emerging as a popular alternative for deploying corporate-wide applications. Here are the basic differences between the client-server and intranet environments.

Intranets are designed using the Internet World Wide Web model, and they look and feel like the wide-open, graphically oriented Web. Users with browser software can access sites and use hot links to move from data location to data location, accessing information as they go.

In contrast, client-server configurations have tighter controls over program access and data management, and the system administrator can plan for user access and data availability. The number of connected users can be set, for example, and users can be given access to some application programs and server resources via password controls or security levels. Intranets can be accessed by any linked PC or workstation, even those from remote locations; thus, traffic loading is less predictable and controllable. Although access to areas can be restricted, all data and services are available in point-and-click mode.

Regardless of implementation, the key to whether you should choose one travel management software application over another, or any application for that matter, should be: Does the software perform the basic functions you require and does it give you the information you need to control costs and better manage your travel activities? If so, then you should ask: Does it fit within the corporate information architecture? If you can answer yes to all these questions, you have the right solution for your needs.

<I>Jim McNellis is vice president, sales and marketing of TravelNet Inc., a Sunnyvale, Calif., software developer.