Start-ups eye the business portal market
In a sign that the young market for business portals is picking up, a number of start-ups are jumping in and introducing new products.
Corporate "portals," like Internet portals, act as a front door for users to access various online systems, applications, or other information within a business network. Many analysts see the corporate portal space as the next growth area in the market, estimating $14 billion in business by 2002.
Start-ups CoreChange and Redwood America both today released products that allow users to work with information from their corporate intranet.
The product launches surprisingly come in the wake of a recent decision by database toolmaker Wall Data to shelve its corporate portal offering, called Cyberprise. Founder and former CEO John Wall to resigned from the company as a result of that decision.
Yet Wall Data's decision hasn't phased other market entrants. CoreChange today jumped in the space with the introduction of its new flagship product, Coreport.
Coreport is a browser-based user interface that comes with a personalized screen, providing a single point of access for a user to Internet and intranet information and applications--including those that are not Web-based, the company said.
CoreChange's new intranet browser has search engine capabilities, and offers increased security features, to ensure only authorized use of the system. The browser will also allow or deny access depending on a person's position in the company.
Redwood America released the latest version of its tool set, geared to gather information specifically from enterprise resource management systems and send that information to a company's corporate portal.
Available in the fourth quarter, Redwood's Version 5 lets users manage and deliver information over a network for SAP R/3, Baan, and Oracle applications, as well as internally-developed applications, the company said.