Lawson Opens Portal Technology
Lawson Software (Minneapolis) has taken a firm stance in favor of corporate use of Internet portal technology with the release of its Insight II SEAport. Now commercially available, SEAport is expected to provide the enterprise computing market with the capability to create integrated, role-based enterprise information portals.
Two years ago, Lawson introduced Self-Evident Applications (SEA), according Richard Lawson, president and COO of Lawson. "We don't believe the Internet is just another way to deploy a client/server offering," he says. Instead, applications that come across the Internet should be self-evident, requiring "zero training."
Simply put, the large volume of users accessing applications over the Internet cannot be trained, particularly when one considers the variety of backgrounds and experience these users bring with them, Lawson points out. SEAport is Lawson's manifestation of SEA technology, software that enables the creation of Internet portals that users access for information.
Insight II SEAport is the application side of portal technology, enabling the creation of a browser-based, customized information access environment. "In its simplest form, [a portal] is in fact a new corporate desktop inside the corporation," says Marty Gruhn, VP and services director of Summit Strategies Inc. (Boston). "This browser-based desktop allows the individual to have access to all of the kinds of information and resources they need to get their job done."
Integration with all Lawson Insight II business management system applications is expected to allow users to make Insight II SEAport their primary workspace. Further, SEAport integration with Lawson Insight II Collaborative Commerce Suite is expected to facilitate tracking of collaborative work processes and prevent processing delays caused by incompatibilities between software systems.
--L. Greenemeier