Trend

The importance of enterprise portals

Enterprise portals are increasingly being adopted by India Inc, observes Shivani Shinde.

After initial hiccups, portal initiatives in India seem to have caught the attention of the Indian CIO community. IDC projects a $3.1 billion global market size for enterprise portals in 2006. Vaibhav Phadnis, Director, Server BG, Microsoft India says that the Indian market is worth $3 million this fiscal. “This is just the market share of packaged products,” he adds.

Some common varieties of portals are corporate portals, functional portals (eHR, sales etc) and initiative-specific portals such as Six Sigma, NPD, and knowledge management.

The recent acquisition of Plumtree by BEA for $200 million shows the growing importance of this market. Two years ago, a Goldman Sachs-Morgan Stanley report had said that cost cutting, employee relationship, external relationships and content management were top CIO priorities. They can be achieved by means of enterprise portals. Analysts Express Computer spoke to recently maintained that these still remain the focus of many organisations.

According to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Product 2005, “Enterprise portals rank in the top 10 of CIO technology focus areas in many surveys.” The report further commented that horizontal portal products continue to be the engine that drives this market segment.

According to the report, the leaders in this segment are BEA, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and Sun Microsystems. Forrester has also released a report on this technology. It says that in 2005, collaboration capabilities will continue to move into IT infrastructure. With Indian companies realising the importance of collaboration, the need for enterprise portals seems inevitable, and these players are making an all out effort to woo them.

Maturing market

Necessity is the mother of invention, and instances can be seen in the way businesses innovate. “Two or three years back, a CIO would need to justify the need for a portal. Since last year we see that customers are accepting and understanding the need for these,” explains Dhruv Singhal, Head, Professional Services, BEA. “Since we have just one tool (WebLogic Server) we are in a better position to deliver quickly,” adds Singhal

So, is an enterprise portal still being used for information access? Says Phadnis, “The ramp up is certainly happening now as they understand the ease of use for accessing information, applications to be mounted on it etc.” Microsoft with its SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is staking a bid and claims that its advantages lie in its ability to integrate MS Office into the Web.

Enterprise portals allow one to choose what comes to their desktops. An enterprise portal includes extranets and other applications within a single infrastructure.

Portal as a tool

According to Atul Sareen, Regional Director South, SAP India, “An enterprise portal was viewed as a Web site rather than an application that has a high value proposition to the business. The value of the portal comes from application and content that it can deliver.”

The extent of maturity in the market can be gauged from the fact that some clear advantages are perceived—easy access to information, knowledge and document management. As Shabbir Imani, Director, Nexstep says, “Awareness among organisations, including senior managers, has significantly increased regarding the benefits and the need for an enterprise portal. Seeding initiatives, such as Intranets, information or content portals and application portals from which organisations evolve into enterprise portals, are having an affect.” He says that a large number of organisations have HR portals and it becomes easier for them to move on to enterprise portals.

Having a portal eliminates the need to manage multiple Web sites; this is one of the reasons why a portal initiative is increasingly being adopted. Cost was another issue that was in the back of a CIO’s mind, but that is not the case anymore. A portal initiative, depending on the number of users might require an investment of anything from Rs 10 lakh to a few crores.

Two or three years back, a CIO would need to justify the need for a portal. Customers now accept and understand the need for them Dhruv Singhal Head, Professional Services BEA	Since there are a large number of employees and centralised information, accessibility becomes crucial in the BPO and BFSI segments Vaibhav Phadnis Director Server BG Microsoft India

Sound reasons

One of the reasons that has delayed the implementation of portals in India is the need to integrate various applications into a single portal. An enterprise portal has two aspects; business application (ERP, CRM etc) and infrastructure application (external portals, exchange infrastructure, applications servers etc). As Sareen explains, “Typically, an organisation will have various vendors providing them these applications. Integrating both these aspects into a single portal becomes expensive and a time-consuming task.”

Realising this, SAP from 2004 onwards provides a single product offering with all platform components called Netweaver2004. mySAP has Netweaver2004 integrated into it and as does the mySAP Business Suite.

A portal initiative according to Imani can be divided into three sections; first, it could be looked at as an infrastructure project where the key driver is IT. Second, it is looked on as a growth project. The key driver is the line of business. A portal then enables organisations to tap new business opportunities. Third, it can be looked at as a transformation project, where the senior management with the support from IT uses it to enable a paradigm shift.

This helps companies to reach out to new markets, build new competencies, or provide new services which would not have been possible otherwise.

Bleeding edge verticals

Singhal believes that though IT/BPO and BFSI segments have been in the forefront of portal initiatives, telecom players are also looking keenly at implementing this technology. “One of the reasons for these segments to initiate their deployments has been the large employee base. Since there are large number of access points and centralised information, accessibility becomes crucial,” explains Phadnis.

Nagaraj Bhargava Director of Sales, Marketing and Strategic Alliances, SAP India says, “We see the enterprise portal initiative being used a lot for the extended ecosystem of a business cycle which includes suppliers, customers etc. However, if the portal initiative is not backed by appropriate content, the chance of it delivering value diminishes considerably.” SAP’s portal initiative addresses Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), knowledge workers, and HR needs. Bhargava is of the view that after the early adopters such as pharmaceuticals, telecom and finance, organisations in the service sector would now invest in portals.

Another sector that is looking at it is the government.

“We also see a good traction of portal deployment in government sector. Not only for their internal use and for citizen initiatives but also in HR, and CRM,” predicts Bhargava.

Enterprise portals go beyond technology. “It’s not just technology but also consulting that helps a user to get going. We look at the portal initiative as a change management exercise. We work with our clients ensuring that this oft-ignored dimension by typical IT companies, is well addressed,” says Imani.

As Indian companies adopt enterprise portals, there is still a huge pent-up demand waiting to be addressed, and the figure that IDC projects could turn out to be a conservative estimate.

shivani@expresscomputeronline.com