InformationWeek

New applications to be offered by Corio include Web-based training, mail and messaging, Web conferencing, and other personal-productivity apps. Corio will be the main point of contact for businesses on all the applications. For ease of use, customers will have a single sign-on name and password for any applications they use.

Gant Redmond, director of operations at Authentica Inc, a privately held Internet security company in Waltham, Mass., is looking forward to a simplified view of PeopleSoft applications. "PeopleSoft is meant for a large corporation with many different people handling different functions, but in a small company such as ours, one person wears many hats, so there's a lot more to know," says Redmond.

Personalizing the way a user sees data should help a lot and should limit the amount of training required. Redmond says time constraints limited Authentica to only one day of training on Corio's previous PeopleSoft application-and more training would have helped.

Analysts are positive about personalizing page views, but say the real challenge will be in adding outside ASPs to the mix. "The challenge is going to be connecting customers to applications that Corio doesn't necessarily host and then integrating those applications on the front end," says Laurie McCabe, a senior analyst at Summit Strategies. "Corio will have to make sure the third-party providers they choose are pretty bulletproof, and that everyone does what they're supposed to do when they are supposed to do it to ensure a positive customer experience."