As more companies look to corporateportals as a way to bring together employees, customers, and suppliers, more packaged applications are appearing to help simplify and speed up deployment.

The latest is from the Sun-Netscape Alliance, also known as iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions. The alliance has introduced iPlanet Portal Server 3.0, a full-service platform for deploying robust portals for e-commerce and collaboration. The software helps companies manage membership rolls, personalization, security, and integration with back-end legacy applications -- and bring them to any user with a browser, said Wess Wasson, vice president of product marketing for infrastructure products at iPlanet. The iPlanet Portal Server features are designed to work together and speed up development time so that users can be instantly connected to information and transaction services when they are granted access. Service categories include: Membership Services, for establishing a portal community; Presentation and Aggregation, which enables portal page layout and creation; Personalization Services, to deliver multi-tiered personalization of content; Security Services, with extranet and remote access security via user authentication; and Integration Services, to integrate applications using HTML and XML. Chuck Christ, IT infrastructure manager for Hitachi America, said his company currently uses the 2.0 version of the system, but plans to move to the updated 3.0 version. Hitachi first wants to use Portal Server to link internal workers who are installing high-speed network connections at home, such as digital subscriber line and cable modems. But eventually Hitachi plans to add third parties such as resellers and business partners to the portal mix, Christ said. iPlanet Portal Server version 3.0 is due in the second quarter of this year.