Like a fine wine, enterprise portals are improving with age.
New and upgraded portal creation software is providing real-time collaboration, more efficient navigation, and better integration features to help organizations speed up processing of business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions and reduce costs.
Systems integrator Computer Technology Associates is using Sybase's Sybase EP (Enterprise Portal), which just began shipping, to upgrade an online product and service procurement system for the US Government Services Administration's Federal Supply Service.
The completed portal will link more than 80,000 US government buyers to 2,000 vendors and about 1 million products, said CTA officials.
Sybase EP will serve as the underlying vehicle to the back-end system, which will allow consolidated access to legacy data and purchase-order systems, according to Robert Ardrey, project manager for the GSA Advantage customization and personalisation contract.
Sybase EP "allows us to create a virtual view of back-end systems and databases," Ardrey said. "This virtual view can then be used by front-end systems ... to isolate the front end from details of the back end."
Sybase EP provides 24-by-7 service availability; content management and personalisation; and integration of databases and applications. It also provides security through a variety of authentication methods for customers, partners, suppliers and employees, according to officials at Sybase, in Emeryville.
While Ardrey said Sybase EP's support for Extensible Markup Language, HTML and multimedia interfaces will enable future enhancements to the GSA portal, he suggested that a Wireless Application Protocol interface would make it even more useful.
The continuous availability promised in Sybase EP is essential to i-investglobal.com Ltd., a Westport, financial services company that aggregates middle-class investors for its mutual fund, stock brokerage and online banking partners.
"Sybase EP is our enterprise framework that provides the architecture where we will plug in all of the tools and applications that connect all of our partners," said i-investglobal CEO Reto Meier. "We have to be up all the time. We can't fail. It's one thing to be selling books and videos, but when your clients are trading globally in fast-moving markets, you can't afford to have a trade stuck in your system."
Next up: Brio.Portal 7.0
Sybase isn't alone in addressing users' need for speed. This month, Brio Technology unveiled Brio.Portal 7.0, which delivers real-time messaging capabilities. The upgrade, due in September, presents charts, syndicated content from more than 850 sources, news flashes and business events on a customised user interface.
The product also allows users to access structured and unstructured data, monitor indicators of market performance and distribute reports across the enterprise.
"Brio has taken discrete components from several different products and allowed them to be exposed in the portal," said Frank Goldsmith, group manager of technical operations at Works.com. "Users can grab pieces of information and put [them] on a dashboard and then drill down into the details -- see the raw data behind the report."
eTime Capital, a Web-based accounts receivable and transaction reconciliation services company in Sunnyvale, counts on Brio's real-time reporting capabilities. eTime uses Brio.Portal 6.0 to manage its customers' complete billing cycles, from the initial purchase order to final payment.
"We provide information through ... Brio to allow our customers to determine, on a real-time basis, any order placed by a buyer [and] whether there is any dispute [when] the purchase order and invoice don't match," said Ricardo Jenez, chief technology officer of eTime. Any time saved is important, Jenez said, because the average time from invoice to payment is 55 days.
"We give our customers information to drive down their DSO [day sales outstanding] and better run their business because they're getting a picture of the predictability of their cash flows," he explained.
Emery Worldwide, a cargo shipper and provider of global logistics solutions, is planning to migrate to Brio.Portal 7.0 within a year. Kevin Grillo, manager of application development for Emery, in particular likes the real-time messaging capability in Brio.Portal 7.0.
"In our business, since we're so time definite, what we manage for the most part is the exceptions," said Grillo, in Portland, Ore. "The sooner we have visibility to the exceptions, the sooner we can respond to customers' needs."
Shakeout ahead?
Analysts say the portal market is overcrowded with technology providers. This month, Oracle started shipping its FastForward Enterprise Portal RPM software, which reduces the number of disparate applications, Web sites and information sources -- including e-mail messages with large attachments -- that users must navigate through to gather information and conduct transactions daily.
FastForward, built on the Oracle8i database and the Oracle WebDB portal building tool, allows companies to build an enterprise portal in a matter of days, according to officials at Oracle, in Redwood Shores.
Also new on the market are Multex.com's BuzzPower 4.0 Portal Edition, which began shipping May 16, and Webridge's Webridge Portal Express, which became available May 15.
Verity, a portal infrastructure maker, is planning to launch on June 26 new, integrated end-to-end portal software.
