New research from International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that the corporate portal market will rapidly evolve beyond the enterprise information portals (EIPs) prominent in today`s market. Development of collaborative portals in the corporate market will lead to enterprise knowledge portals (EKPs) that connect people, information, and processing capabilities in the same environment. "The development of EKPs provides an important corollary to the idea that the network is the computer, and that corollary is the portal is the desktop," said Gerry Murray, IDC`s Director of Knowledge Management Technologies. This will have a fundamental impact on how IT systems are implemented, the way customers spend their money on hardware, software, and services, and the very structure of the IT industry itself.
IDC`s report, Sourcebook for Knowledge Superconductivity, identifies portals as the ideal medium for knowledge management and concludes that EIPs are not currently sufficient for the corporate world. IDC identifies four points of evolution for corporate portals:
Enterprise information portals (EIP), which provide personalized information to users on a subscription and query basis
Enterprise collaborative portals (ECP), which provide virtual places for people to work together
Enterprise expertise portals (EEP), which provide connections between people based on their abilities
Enterprise knowledge portals (EKP), which provide all of the above and proactively deliver links to content and people that are relevant to what users are working on in real time
The first three portals are being developed today, with EIP being the most active segment. Collaboration portals are developing rapidly, and the expertise portals are just now beginning to get the attention they deserve from developers. While not available today, IDC expects EKPs to be a market reality later in 1999.
IDC Predicts Rampant Consolidation
IDC found that a vast number of companies are staking some claim to KM. According to Marianne Hedin, Program Manager of IDC`s Consulting Services research and contributor to the report, "Management consultancies have been the strongest advocates of KM to date, and while their offerings are comprehensive, they are largely undifferentiated. Technology vendors, on the other hand, are highly differentiated but lack the resources to effectively penetrate the market. As a result, there will be substantial consolidation in the KM market."
IDC is publishing a series of three reports that evaluate knowledge management and its implications for customers, service providers, and the computer industry. The first, Sourcebook for Knowledge Superconductivity, defines the major knowledge management product and service categories and explains the value of each, differentiates product and service categories, and presents profiles on more than 40 knowledge management product and consulting service providers. To order a copy of the report, contact Cheryl Toffel at 1-800-343-4952, ext. 4389 or at ctoffel@idc.com. Additional information on IDC can be found on its Web site at http://www.idc.com.
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