Portals in perspective

Portals are supposed to help you see corporate data more clearly, but the ill-defined nature of what a portal should look like is not helping. Although there is no such thing as a portal "industry" as yet, there are many vendors who are coming at the problem from different angles with differing skills.

Document management software vendors provide the basic infrastructure for collaboration, internal publishing and workflow. Internet companies contribute search engines which use advanced algorithms to sift through corporate data, plus the ability to personalise Web interfaces, and intranet design experience.

Business intelligence providers sift through unstructured data stored in data warehouses, data marts and desktop spreadsheets. In the name of interactivity, Web-to-host software developers can connect the portal to back-end functionality.

Note on listing: This is not an all-inclusive list, with those included being representative of several different sectors which are converging on the portal market. The vendors are organised alphabetically. The "strengths" of each vendor are not the only features contained in their product families.