Purchasing an Existing Intranet
There are a number of commercial intranet development companies who concentrate on a single code base and use it for all their clients. In most cases, the product is highly customizable and is available to their own development clients and external clients in a component-based fee structure. This could allow you to potentially take the list of functional components determined in your Needs Analysis and cross-reference them with different vendors' products to find a package that meets your needs.
The advantage of choosing a package like this is that you can purchase it outright (although some vendors have annual licensing fees), have your team customize it with your design and content, and then host it on the web server of your choice. It gives you autonomous control over the growth and management of the site over time. And it allows you to take advantage of a, ideally, well-developed system that's been tried and true over time.
The disadvantages of this type of package relate to the expense, time, and energy required to make minor or major changes, and to fix problems when they occur. While upgrades to newer versions can solve some problems and "known bugs," the process of upgrading can be difficult since any modifications made to older installations will likely have to be redone (though this isn't always the case now that many developers are separating content and layout from functionality within their applications, and even separating sub-elements of their own functional components).
Many vendors offer support service subscriptions, but their staff won't be as dedicated to your problems as your internal IT staff would be if they knew how the system worked. When an issue needs serious attention (for example, when it crashes the night before a major event and can't be restarted), their support staff may not be available to help. This can obviously lead towards frustration (and that leads to Anger, and eventually the Dark Side). The alternative option of hiring an independent consultant (or someone from the vendor) to provide a fix can be quite expensive, depending on the amount of work required. So you may want to consider investing in training for some of your IT staff to become knowledgeable about the inner-workings of the product.
Some of the leading vendors in this readymade product area (applications that will work right out of the box with some minor customizations) are:
- Deep Blue Creative (http://www.deepbluecreative.com)
- Elleance (http://www.elliance.com)
- GroupSpace (https://www.groupspace.info)
- Intranet Connections (http://www.intranetconnections.com)
- Klick Interactive (http://www.klickit.com)
- Process Software (http://www.process.com)
- Kaorg (http://www.kaorg.com)