Verano Inc has shipped Illuminar 2.0, a product designed for building enterprise information portals (EIPs) with context management capabilities. As VP of sales and marketing Robert Goldberg puts it: Without context what good is information? He admits that Verano is cashing in on the current buzz around EIPs, but adds: We think it’s a valuable business scenario.
We used to call them intranets, Goldberg says, but an intranet is static. People found what they really wanted was access to disparate information – minute-to-minute organic information. As Goldberg points out, with the success of the Yahoos and Excites, internet portals have become an easy model for people to grasp. But in his view, the portal model doesn’t go far enough.
Context is key, he says. So is simplicity of implementation: You don’t want another big heavy application. Instead, Verano offers Illuminar, consisting of a desktop client (the Folder), a server and an administration console. The system essentially does four things. First, it unifies information from various sources: ERP applications, Word files and CAD files, for example. Second, it allows that information to be personalized, using context- sensitive search. Third, Illuminar controls access to sensitive commercial information and fourth, it measures and audits the way data is used.
It’s all done through metadata – specifically, through XML. Paul Pangaro, Verano’s chief technology officer, explains that metadata can be added to corporate information both manually and automatically, eliminating the huge burden of tagging every file, while making it possible to tag nuances a purely automated system might miss. That adds flexibility and ease of deployment, Pangaro observes. This is a key differentiator over established rivals like Notes. Half our customers at least are Notes shops, Pangaro says, but Notes is too damned hard to deploy.
As for the rest of Verano’s putative competitors in the enterprise information portal (EIP) market, Pangaro says some, like Plumtree and Autonomy, are just starting off, while others – notably Documentum – are coming to EIPs having exhausted a market of their own. He claims that only Verano has the right combination of experience and an holistic product. That combination doesn’t exactly come cheap: Illuminar 2.0 is priced from $25,000 for the first server.
