CA ventures into crowded Web portal market

by Denise Dubie

January 24, 2001 —

ISLANDIA, N.Y. -- Computer Associates last week became the latest vendor to join the crowded portal software market with a product designed to stand out through its ability to present end users with personalized data from many sources.

The company's Jasmineii Portal sits on a Windows NT or Unix server and delivers data to end users via their Web browsers. The software determines what information to deliver by using a predefined user profile and CA's Neugents technology, which tracks the usage patterns of individuals or a group, learns their preferences and determines what information to deliver.

The software also uses the Eureka portal engine technology obtained through CA's recent acquisition of Sterling Software to provide what may make CA's product rise above others in the market, says Michael Dortch, principal research analyst at the Robert Frances Group in Westport, Conn.

"Enterprise information portals must be flexible, open, scalable, robust and interoperable," Dortch says. CA can deliver such a portal product because its Jasmineii platform integrates with applications, databases and directories, and supports XML, Java and other standards-based access methods, he says.

But CA plays up its portal's ability to provide "dynamic personalization" as the biggest differentiator. The first level of personalization comes from network administrators who set up the portal software, determine who has access to what information, and securely assign those rights.

End users can then predefine the information they want pushed to their desktops. CA's Neugents technology can push relevant information to end users based on clickstream analysis and user profiling.

Robert Turner says the Jasmineii Portal helps his department deliver reports to end users' desktops from a data warehouse. Working as a management analyst in the IS department of the State Courts of Utah, Turner says his end users -- usually judges seeking case information -- "want information within five minutes" of logging on.

"We maintain the data warehouse on the back end, post reports up to the portal and the user just needs [Microsoft Internet Explorer] on the desktop," he says.

Pricing starts at $10,000 for small sites, but can rise to several hundred thousand dollars for companies with thousands of users.

Computer Associates: www.ca.com

Network World