The first announcement involves the launch of its Enterprise Portal Service that hosts customers' internal portals at Powerize.com. This outsourcing solution is designed to allow organizations to mount a portal platform without experiencing the usual software and technology-related costs and complexities usually involved. This portal service will allow an organization's employees to simultaneously search internal and external information sources. The internal sources can range from Lotus Notes databases to document collections indexed by Documentum, Excalibur, or Verity. External sources include the 10,000-plus newspapers, journals, and newswires available through Powerize.com. Powerize.com feels organizations will be very attracted by a service integrating this vast array of content on a ready-to-go portal. The company is also banking on the strong appeal of its metasearch technology that it has combined with Inktomi's search engine.

Powerize.com's other announcement unveils a series of alliances formed with eight leading technology firms that will see Powerize.com providing content access to these vendors' corporate and government customers. The Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) companies involved are as follows:

• Engenia Software, a developer of distributed, collaborative portals for corporations.
• Hummingbird, a global supplier of integrated, network-based knowledge management solutions.
• Hyperware, a company dedicated to helping companies leverage intellectual capital through structured, shared information.
• Lotus Development Corp., an IBM company that is working to redesign the business paradigm through practical knowledge management, e-business, and other innovative technologies using the Internet.
• Plumtree Software, developer of the first corporate portal capable of embedding third-party tools and services.
• Radnet, Inc., a specialist in portal development for managing business-to-business selling relationships.
• Sybase, Inc., one of the largest global independent software companies, whose Enterprise Portal solutions allow businesses to interact effectively with customers, partners, and suppliers.
• Viador, Inc., which developed the E-Portal Suite solution that combines knowledge management, database access, and reporting.

Powerize.com chairman and CEO Ed Addison said: "These companies decided to partner with Powerize.com for two reasons. First, our ability to provide access to more than 10,000 brand-name titles on various billing models, including unlimited free access to 2,400 newspapers, magazines, journals, and newswires; and second, our proprietary metasearch technology, which permits the user to search simultaneously across the widest range of intranet, Internet, and premium content sources, no matter where they reside."

Powerize.com was founded in January 1997 as KnowledgeLink Interactive, Inc. to provide automated business research and competitive intelligence tools. The current name was adopted in January 1999, along with the slogan "powerize your search for the right information." The original basis for the content collection was IBM's infoMarket and Newsstand services, which KnowledgeLink Interactive purchased in 1998. Since that time the company has formed relationships with over 60 publishers and aggregators including The Dialog Corp., Bell & Howell Information and Learning, Gale Group, EBSCO Information, Primark, Hoover's, Find/SVP, Investext, BNA, COMTEX News Network, Market Guide, Phillips Publishing, Zacks Investment Research, and First Call, among others.

Powerize.com's basic product is a retail Web site that allows individuals to access business research content from over 10,000 titles provided by these suppliers, 2,400 of which are available free to registered users who maintain a minimum usage level. Other sources are pay-per-view or subscription-based.

There are currently more than 250,000 members registered for the Powerize.com site. While the firm plans to continue enhancing and supporting this site, including the introduction of a new search engine in the second quarter of this year, it is now making a strong push into the enterprise solution business model. As Michael Gallagher, senior vice president of strategy and development, pointed out, Powerize.com can instantly add thousands of users through enterprise-wide contracts with corporations and government agencies. The retail Web site, however, provides an easy introductory path into organizations for Powerize.com. According to Ed Murphy, senior vice president of sales, the retail site also allows Powerize.com to stay on top of new Web-based technologies and incorporate them into the company's server-based enterprise solution products.

Powerize.com will be reviewed in the May/June 2000 issue of Intranet Professional.