Microsoft Corp. Friday got quite an endorsement of its rarely-talked-about
portal server as 13 software vendors pledged to fit their new enterprise
offerings with the software giant’s SharePoint Portal Server.
The announcement was made at the Microsoft Fusion 2001 business symposium
and partner exposition, in Anaheim, Calif. The firms who agreed to support
SharePoint by offering it to their customers include: Aimware Inc., Citrix
Systems Inc., Corechange Inc., Decision Support Panel International (DSP),
Elite Information Systems, InfoImage Inc., Intervate, IXOS Software AG, JPH
International, K-Solutions Inc., Notable Solutions Inc., Semio Corp. and
Webridge Inc.
Developed by Microsoft’s research and development team and launched in May,
SharePoint Portal Server merges functionality with document management
solutions, resulting in a customizable enterprise portal.
Microsoft’s largest customer on the enterprise software vending list is
Citrix Systems Inc., which recently acquired portal vendor Sequoia Software
Corp. Citrix Friday said it plans to integrate the search and document
management functionality in
SharePoint Portal Server with its XML-based portal product, XPS.
“Making the search and document management functionality of SharePoint
Portal Server part of our portal solutions will improve user productivity
through more efficient use of information sources,” said Paul Hahn, director
of corporate development for Citrix. “The functionality of SharePoint Portal
Server nicely complements the broad capabilities of our XML-based portal
software.”
Other vendors have announced new products built on or for SharePoint Portal
Server:
- Aimware will offer a Web-based collaboration product designed for the
Microsoft SharePoint platform - Corechange will integrate its Coreport 3g with SharePoint, providing
customers with role-based, single sign-on functionality, enterprise portal
scalability, availability and wireless access - DS Panel will provide business intelligence Web Parts for linking
SharePoint to business analysis tools - Elite Information Systems is leveraging Microsoft’s Web Parts and
SharePoint strategy in its development efforts for Elite Dashboard, which is
designed to ease the portal access to Elite practice management solutions
for law firms and professional services firms - InfoImage will integrate its Decision Portal 4 product with SharePoint,
providing customers with document management and search, discussion and
subscription abilities; scalability to 3 million users; and reduced search
times - Intervate will combine its IntraCS with SharePoint, resulting in a
scalable solution that enables customers to deploy robust and cost-effective
enterprise intranet applications
- IXOS Software will provide customers with secure storage and management
of large volumes of documents through integration of the IXOS-eCONserver
with SharePoint
- Notable Solutions’ AutoStore 2000, built for SharePoint, will offer
customers a way to convert paper documents into electronic versions, such as
Microsoft Word, PDF or HTML formats, which can restored and retrieved
- Semio will combine Semio Tagger, its core categorization and indexing
engine, with SharePoint. The combined
products will offer users enhanced content analysis and categorization
capabilities for more precise information management
- Webridge’s Webridge PX fortifies SharePoint with extranet security and
B2B commerce modules that enable secure collaboration, and accelerate
conventional and XML-automated sales to strategic customers and distribution
partners.