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To: accountclosed who wrote (22411)	3/1/1999 8:01:00 AM
From: wlheatmoon	Respond to of 86076

TO ALL--what do you know about EIP's? From ZDNet today. Yahoo Schmahoo! Why Corporate America Is Disowning Consumer Portals Jesse Berst, Editorial Director ZDNet AnchorDesk Quick. What's the fastest growing area of the Web? I'll bet you didn't guess "enterprise information portal." Yet Merrill Lynch says this emerging category hit $4.4 billion last year and will reach $14.8 billion by 2002. It claims EIPs will exceed the investment opportunities of the massive enterprise resource planning (ERP) market. Wow. Traditional portals provide a starting point for any old Netizen. Enterprise portals provide a personalized home base for one company's employees. In most cases, they combine information from the company intranet with selected links from the Internet. Some of them even include access to corporate email, for the ultimate in one-stop surfing. In theory, corporate portals offer several benefits. For instance, they: present important company information -- phone lists, HR notices, sales resources -- as easy-to-access HTML pages include news and information from the Web at large, providing an everything-in-one-place starting point give bosses more control over what employees see prevent advertisers from cashing in on employees, since corporate portals don't carry ads (unless you want them to, in which case you get the fees) Dozens of companies are working on the idea. Most of them fall into one of three buckets: Private-label portal: Netscape pioneered this idea with its Custom Netcenter plan, currently in use by corporate titans such as Coca-Cola, Lucent Technologies and Texas Instruments. Click for more. Rent-a-portal: No, I'm not talking about plastic outhouses. I mean service companies that build and host enterprise portals. Portera Systems' ServicePort is just one example. Click for more. Portal-in-a-box: Software and services to get you started. The most crucial element is the "middleware" that accesses corporate databases and serves them up as password-protected Web pages. Viador's E-Portal Suite is a popular version of this idea. Click for more. As Liz explains in the news today, Yahoo is warning investors of threats to its continued growth. Click for more. The company cites consolidation and competition from today's traditional megaportals. Yahoo should have mentioned EIPs as well, which show every sign they will siphon growth from the Yahoos of the world. What do you think of Yahoo's prospects for continued dominance? Does your company have the beginnings of an EIP yet? Use the TalkBack button below. I'll post responses beneath this article. Or go to my Berst Alerts forum, where a discussion is underway.