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.