Privately-held software firm Portal Wave Inc. Monday kicked off an enterprise application portal solution designed to merge companies' enterprise tools into one e-business platform.

Portal Wave's Application Portal Server 1.0 purpose is to aggregate multiple applications such as enterprise resource planning and customer resource management into a unified portal interface. The technology that allows this is called Wavelets.

Portal Wave's APS is comprised of a user interface (UI) generator, personalization engine, workflow engine and portal administrator. Also included as part of the complete package are the Portal Wave Tool Kit 1.0 and the Portal Wave Application Starter Kit 1.0. These are some of the specific functions the tool kit performs:

• Portal Designer -- Allows customization of the look and feel of the portal
• Form Designer -- Allows administrators to quickly develop portal forms such as order entry or purchase requisition forms
• Workflow Designer -- Allows customization of workflow processes and notifications through portal alerts and portal inbox/e-mail

The Application Starter Kit consists of common portal applications such as e-mail, forums, calendar/to-do lists, bulletin boards, chat, banners and a portal usage log.

Stephen D. Hendrick, an analyst at International Data Corp., said many organizations are turning their attention to creating enterprise application portals to better support their objectives.

"EAPs deliver value to companies by exposing business processes -- such as sales transactions, customer ordering, shipping, and billing -- and integrating them by utilizing workflow," Hendrick said. "While creating an EAP can be a complex and time-consuming process, Portal Wave has developed a strategy to enable an EAP to be implemented quickly, easily and effectively."

Portal Wave has developed pre-built Wavelets for key business processes, which can be tailored and implemented for each customer. Pre-built Wavelets currently exist for Oracle Computer Corp. SAP and PeopleSoft Inc.

Portal Wave's Application Portal Server is available now; pricing starts at $67,500.