Epicentric, Inc., provider of Business Portal solutions, Tuesday announced the formation of a global alliance with PwC Consulting, the management consulting services business of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The partnership means that both firms will jointly develop and deliver portal applications built on the Epicentric Foundation Server, a solution for building portal networks. The alliance extends the working relationship between the two organizations, which have already deployed portals for several corporations.
“Increasingly, our clients must build and manage integrated Web services aimed at multiple business communities both inside and outside their enterprises,” says Robin Lissak, PwC Consulting partner. “We plan to utilize Epicentric’s portal solutions as an enabling technology to complement PwC Consulting’s overall enterprise portal service offerings.”
These portal solutions incorporate e-commerce capabilities, such as transactions, trading exchanges, and order fulfillment; applications, such as email, CRM, and ERP; and content including news, market research, and internally published documents. The Epicentric Foundation Server integrates and delivers privately branded aggregations of Web services to internal and external business communities across intranets, extranets and the Internet.
Epicentric and PwC Consulting will also focus on developing solutions for specific vertical industries: “PwC Consulting’s consulting and integration experience, coupled with Epicentric’s leadership in providing portal network solutions, will enable customers to streamline business processes and increase their competitive advantage,” says Bill Yarnoff, Epicentric’s vice president of Global Alliances.
He argues that the pooling of both firms’ resources and expertise will give customers access to one of the markets most advanced portal solutions.