The extranet environment replaces the "dumb" terminals that linked the company's 370 remote offices to headquarters with browser-based workstations or laptops. "In the past, we just threw a router out there with TN3270 and a green screen," says Duke Burrell, network architect for Farm Bureau Financial Services. "As our agent offices and business affiliates grow, so does our need to get information to them."

Farm Bureau now also provides Novell VPN (virtual private network) client access at the desktop for the Novell BorderManager-based VPN, and some of the company's larger offices will have their own servers equipped with VPN access to the hosts at headquarters. "That will be more of a site-to-site VPN," Burrell says.

The insurance and financial services company uses the IPsec (IP security) feature in the VPN software for encrypting the IP transmission and authenticating the devices. Burrell says a few Farm Bureau offices purchased their own Internet access, so filters and access controllers will also be used on their edge routers for security, but the bulk of the sites and users connecting to the extranet will do so with IPsec. Digital certificates also are on the horizon for authenticating agents when they log onto the extranet, as are digital signatures for agents to electronically sign forms.

Farm Bureau's server farm consists of clustered Novell NetWare 5.1 servers and Microsoft Windows 2000 servers connected to a Xiotech Corp. Magnitude SAN (storage area network) system. Among its applications are a massive Lotus Notes installation and some homegrown applications for policy-generation and other insurance-specific applications. For now, the extranet site contains mainly PDF files of policy forms for the agents, but Farm Bureau has begun recoding select legacy mainframe applications, including those for policy, agent membership and commission statement, with Allaire Corp.'s ColdFusion and Spectra tools to make them Web-based and accessible on the site, too.

Commission reports are another hot item for the agents. These reports let agents track their production performance and commissions. Commission reports used to take several days to arrive by snail mail, but now agents can look them up in a few minutes via the extranet.

The trade-off for the extranet, however, is the training and support it requires, Burrell says. "It's a new technology that we need to implement for an environment that requires maximum uptime. And we have to have knowledgeable people to support it," he says. Burrell, who with other members of the e-business team designed the extranet, says the company's technical services staff is getting more involved in the extranet so it can provide support for the system.