InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
June 21, 1999
Vendors Rush To Capitalize On Popularity Of PortalsNew software meets demand for integrated links
By Beth Davis, with Brian Riggs and Jeff Sweat
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ager to address the growing interest in business portals, a handful of vendors are updating their software with integrated content and performance enhancements.Plumtree Software Inc. said last week that it has integrated Excite Inc.'s Internet services into its portal system, so businesses can pull Excite stock quotes, maps, business news, and more into their portals. "It reduces confusion about knowing where to find something," says Howard Frysinger, chief knowledge coordinator at SCT Corp., a Malvern, Pa., software vendor whose 800 employees use the portal to access information residing in Lotus Notes databases, client systems, and on the Web. "It has been evolutionary."
Other portal vendors are boosting external links as well. Next month, Epicentric Inc. will launch Epicentric Portal Server, with more than 100 partnerships with such companies as Goto.com, Hoovers Online, StockPoint, Travelocity, and WeatherLabs. Lotus Development will reveal a partnership with Lycos Inc. that will give users a customizable portal to information from the Internet via Notes version 5.01, expected to ship next month.
Integrated links to external information is a requirement of any successful business portal, analysts say. "Without that kind of linkage, a corporate portal risks becoming another island of information in the organization, requiring users to hop back and forth between internal feeds and Internet feeds and ultimately defeating the purpose," says Hadley Reynolds, director of research at the Delphi Group.
Postal Test
The U.S. Postal Service is testing Epicentric's portal to use with its custom MarketTracks portal, which serves more than 500 employees in the Postal Service's marketing department. "We have to provide sales and marketing with a way to access the information from their desktops to beat the competition," says John Gregory, a marketing specialist at the Postal Service.
Scalability is another key requirement. KnowledgeTrack Corp.next month will launch Knowledge Center, portal software that can run on Microsoft Transaction Server, SilverStream's application server, and Sun's NetDynamics application server.
In other news, Onyx Software Inc. this week will introduce Onyx Enterprise Portal, one of the first portals to emerge from a customer relationship management vendor. The portal blends customer-management technologies with other customer-focused applications, services, and content. And Portera Systems, which hosts business portals, last week acquired Tilden Park Software, specialists in Web training and technical services.
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