Sun Microsystems customers have asked that a strong base of content be embedded in its pending SunONE Portal Server 6.0 release, and Yahoo wants to reach more corporate eyeballs. So it's only natural that the companies have formed a partnership in which the enterprise edition of My Yahoo will be integrated into Sun's new portal server in the form of more than 80 content portlets. Sun's portal customers will be able to set role-based access to the portlets, which essentially act as individual content views within a customized portal. The relationship is similar to existing arrangements Yahoo has with SAP and Tibco Software.

Sun and Yahoo are hoping to help CIOs leverage their software infrastructure investments by letting employees get all the content they want from a single location rather than having to search through multiple Web sites and internal applications, says David Gee, Yahoo's VP of portal solutions. Sun customers will have 120 days to sample the enterprise edition of My Yahoo for free, after which they can subscribe without interruption to the content flow. Subscriptions are available on a per-CPU or per-seat basis, with typical corporate deals running between $15,000 and $30,000 a month, says Gee.

The companies also are trying to entice employees to access the Yahoo content--and thus spend more time on their corporate portals--by letting them apply the preferences from their individual My Yahoo accounts, thereby reducing the time it takes to set up a customized portal view populated with Yahoo content. A release date for Sun's new portal server hasn't been set.

Analysts say the partnership is a logical one for both companies. Offering fresh, relevant content is crucial to ensuring widespread usage of corporate portals, which in turn will lead to increased sales of Sun's portal server, says Laura Ramos, a director at Giga Information Group. The relationship also clarifies Yahoo's main business proposition--as a content service, not a portal player, says Delphi Group analyst Hadley Reynolds. Says Reynolds: "It's clear they're going to leverage the value that their brand has."