Managing computing resources in intranets: An electronic commerce perspective

Intra-organizational networks (intranets) are increasingly being developed for information sharing and collaborative work in geographically dispersed organizations. However, organizations are increasingly realizing that having an intranet in itself may not provide expected increase in productivity and benefits. Intranet resources have to be managed appropriately and with organizational goals in mind for intranets to be a meaningful part of organizational environment. In this paper we provide a framework to manage the resources in the intranets using the concepts of electronic commerce. Specifically, we propose the creation of an electronic organizational unit, intranet Resource Management Unit (iRMU), that manages user requests using a dynamic priority pricing approach. The iRMU integrates a dynamic priority pricing approach with the concepts of topology management, security management, and software-agents based service construction to create a comprehensive resource management environment. The contribution of this paper is to provide a framework that integrates existing technological base with economic pricing approaches to create an economics-embedded intranet resource management approach.