extranet

The connecting of two or more intranets. If you think of an intranet as a company's internal Web site which allows users inside the company to communicate and exchange information, now imagine connecting that virtual space with another company's intranet, thus allowing these two (or more) companies to share resources and communicate over the Internet in their own virtual space. This technology greatly enhances business to business communications. Companies like Netscape, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and VeriSign announced support for a core set of open standards for enabling external networks (extranets).