11-7-95. W$J, Page One lead: "The 'Intranet'. Internet Software Poses Big Threat to Notes, IBM's Stake in Lotus." Hundreds of firms are achieving similar groupware linkups with simpler, cheaper systems on the World Wide Web. Dubbed "Intranets," these private networks combine text, graphics and even video to distribute news, answer employee questions, update personnel records and connect far-flung workers. The Intranets link a total of about 15 million workers. These private networks are far different from what most Internet fans see -- the public "home pages." These setups reside on company-controlled servers shielded from the public Web by a security "firewall." The Web has an "open" design that all programming developers can use in common, as opposed to the "closed" and proprietary designs of Lotus Notes, Novell's Groupwise and Microsoft's Exchange. That lets Intranets accept traffic from incompampatible computers more readily, making it easier for customers and suppliers to tap in, and for users to draw data from old mainframes and minicomputers. NOT_nok (10 kb)