InformationWeek

May 10, 1999

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Portal Push

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"In terms of a strategy for an enterprise portal implementation, SAP and PeopleSoft have worked hard on their messages," says Ed Black, VP of enterprise applications at Aberdeen Group. "In terms of the underlying architecture to run apps in the Internet-driven market, I think Oracle is ahead."

Sales Booster
All the ERP vendors hope portals will help boost shrinking sales. They've sold their core applications to thousands of companies, but only a small percentage of employees within those companies actually use the applications. Analysts say portals could be a way for the vendors to reach every employee--and thereby sell more user licenses. "We started off managing the processes within businesses; now we want to manage the processes between businesses," says Andy Zoldan, a VP at SAP.

But the question remains: Are ERP vendors better positioned to design a portal than the third-party developers storming the market? Portal software is available from business-intelligence vendors such as Cognos, Information Advantage, and SAS Institute; document-management vendors such as Documentum; and newcomers such as Glyphica, Plumtree Software, Verano, and Viador. All are working to integrate ERP data into their applications.

Tim Graumann, CIO at E-Tek Dynamics Inc., which uses Oracle Applications Release 11, says the company will rely on more than just Oracle to build its portal, because Graumann favors a best-of-breed approach. For instance, the San Jose, Calif., maker of fiber-optic network components is working with CCBN to manage investor-relations information on E-Tek's Web site, including building links to other URLs. "I see the portal as being a combination of a lot of service providers and technology," says Graumann.

The ERP vendors say they are the ones with the expertise to link front- and back-end systems--because their core products form the foundation on which their customers' business is conducted--and they're developing the integration technology to do just that. "ERP vendors are in a good position to provide portals that let us do business with customers and suppliers online, since a lot of that activity requires interfaces into manufacturing and ERP systems,'' says Graumann.

But other users wonder whether ERP vendors would be better off putting their research and development dollars toward more immediate initiatives. Steve Hansen, VP of corporate information services at Toro Co. in Minneapolis, says SAP needs to beef up new supply-chain and customer-management products, some of which have already missed release dates. "I think SAP may be getting ahead of itself," he says. "They have a long way to go to prove they have what it takes to build up these Internet communities."

Steve Hansen

John Keast, VP and CIO of energy company PG&E Corp. in San Francisco, is wary for another reason. "The big question for all the ERP vendors is whether they can embrace being part of a larger world," he says. "The SAP application needs to work with data from other sources. I don't want SAP to become the thing that everything else has to fit into."

The ERP vendors insist their products will be open to other technologies and data, but even they admit their portal strategies are not fully baked. Questions about security, standards, and revenue models have yet to be fully addressed.

But Aberdeen Group predicts that by January, 2001, all requests for proposals for ERP software will require functionality necessary to create a portal-like environment. "Who's who in enterprise applications is going to be different than it is today,'' says analyst Black. "Those that make it will be able to develop and deploy portals."