Business portals: winners and losers in the future

By Mark Chillingworth

The Enterprise portal market could be one of the most exciting battle scenes over the coming 12 months, but who ever succeeds, they are going to have to answer some important questions from the Enterprise market and ensure their product supplies everything that the market demands. Those that don't will have to become specialised suppliers or leave the field.

Enterprises are demanding more and more from their portal, with vendors having to provide a unified graphical user interface across the entire company, as well as process integration.

Henry Morris, in his latest report for IDC said of the Enterprise Portal market, "There will be few leaders in the merged enterprise portal category, while many other players will focus on their core strengths to become "complementors" to the central portal software." In his report, 'Race for Portal Preeminence' believes as the portal market grows and business consumers demand more, the portal will evolve with players following each others lead as one adds a different set of features.

IDC believe that enterprise portals currently come in three distinctly different categories; information portals - knowledge portals, application portals, all based on user roles.