The enterprise portal software market is set to double its growth in 2001. Already worth $220 million in 2000, enterprise portals are a crucial part of companies' overall business objectives.
According to leading research group Giga, the enterprise portal market is growing despite the economic downturn. "This growth is being spurred by the need to better access, organise, find and leverage an organisation's information and services."
Although the future of enterprise portals sounds rosy, the vendor landscape is overcrowded and Giga recommends organisations approach this sector with caution, evaluating products from the larger vendors.
What is alarming is that most "pure-play" vendors will probably go out of business in the next eight to 12 months. Those most likely to survive will be enterprise application vendors and larger Web content management (WCM) vendors. Portals will soon become part of larger platform and application implementations as opposed to standalone purchases.
"Leaders will most likely include Sun Microsystems e-commerce solution iPlanet, BEA and IBM along with other WCMs and enterprise application vendors," says Giga. "Sun's iPlanet has become the most well-rounded portal offering of the platform and infrastructure vendors today."
"iPlanet is offering enterprise portal products that provide one platform on which to build multiple types of portal sites. We are a large stable vendor that offers products that are mature and as such are likely to take market share from smaller vendors," says Duncan Peruch, business development manager at iPlanet SA. Giga sees the portal layer becoming part of larger platform deals with key vendors selling products as part of larger database, application server, server OS and directory server solutions. This will become more viable as portal products mature in the next year.
"As the demand for portal technologies is growing, businesses are evaluating their specific portal needs. iPlanet is a well rounded product offering that provides accessibility to integrated services and data. Portals are becoming part of the larger solution and iPlanet is beneficial to companies' overall business objectives," says Peruch.
*Giga Information Group report: Market Overview - Enterprise Portal Market in Transition
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