The technology behind the software is based on years of research in neural networks and pattern matching technologies. According to Autonomy, its software identifies and encodes the unique "signature" of the key concepts within text documents, no matter what format they were created in. The signature then seeks out and uncovers the presence of similar concepts in volumes of content, whether it's from Web sites, a news feed, or an email archive. Autonomy's software is used by Associated Press, Barclays Bank, British Aerospace, Clorox, SF Gate, Unilever, the United States Department of Defense and Xoom.com.

"Portals, we think, are the center of the Net economy," Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale told an audience at the Internet World '98 trade show in New York. Soon after, Netscape came out with its own version, Netcenter. Hosted by Netscape and running on Solaris, the Netcenter wants to attract companies desiring to build an external Web presence, as well as providing an intranet portal that will link customers, suppliers, and employees to a network. From a Netscape Custom Netcenter site, users can personalize their own start pages with email, a calendar, personalized stocks, news, and weather, combined with company-specific information and services such as e-commerce applications, phone books, and product information. The custom portal service has been adopted by companies including Hewlett Packard, Lucent Technologies, and Federal Express. It runs from $150,000 to $200,000.

Besides Autonomy, there are other vendors in every corner of the portal arena. Each may offer software and service solutions that may jell with your goals. Pricing depends on your needs and the specific implementation.

Epicentric
Epicentric provides extranet, intranet, and Internet portal tools and hosting services to companies wanting to create custom portals. You can create a corporate intranet portal with the enterprise tools to help keep employees focused on relevant internal and external information and resources. For vertical and affinity portals, Epicentric tools help you acquire and retain customers.

Syndication partners include Excite, IBM, MapQuest, Travelocity.com, and others.

Plumtree
With Plumtree's Corporate Portal 3.0, you can not only create a complete corporate portal, but also enhance content with Plumtree's exclusive embedded tools. These tools let you query corporate data for customer relationship management, promote team collaboration, enable business processes and intelligence, and more. Employees can work from one Web page to access email, schedules, and work documents.

Viador
Viador's E-Portal Suite is a browser-based portal system providing access to vital business information contained in systems such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, Vantive, and Clarify, as well as standard desktop tools such as Excel and Word. A comprehensive and integrated enterprise information portal tool, E-Portal Suite gives users a single browser-based interface with which to access up-to-the-minute reports, analyze business results, and publish data quickly and easily.

Partnering with Viador are companies such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, and Informatica.

Glyphica
Glyphica's PortalWare solutions provide your marketing team with real-time account and competitive information. TeamOnline allows group collaboration, including document sharing, collaboration, and meetings via the desktop Web browser. InfoPortal Sales Online keeps your sales and marketing staff up-to-date on sales and marketing data within the enterprise as well as incorporating data from mobile salespeople.

Glyphica's partners include SAP, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, and Siebel.

Resources for Add-Ons
Hundreds of options are available for people not looking to operate software. "If you look at a solution that involves buying software, maintenance, and providing customer support, the vast majority of the people will find they will be better off with a private label service from someone else's site," says Barry Par from International Data Corporation. He points to the plethora of add-ons available including search engines, calendaring, and directories from companies such as USAnet, Direct Hit, Looksmart, and infoUSA.

• NewsReal's IndustryWatch is a Web-based news and information service used by heavy hitters such as MSNBC and Go Network that covers 120 categories, draws content from 400 published sources, and processes more than 35,000 articles daily. It costs $10,000 to set up plus a $10,000 monthly fee, which includes hosting and 120 categories of industry news and information.
• AltaVista Discovery is a sophisticated search engine that helps index and manage retrieved information. Download the service for free. System requirements are Windows 95/98/NT 4.0 and Netscape Navigator 3.0 and later or Internet Explorer 3.02 and later.
• My Yahoo News Ticker provides a direct feed of the latest headline news, stock quotes, sports scores, and weather reports. It runs on Windows 95/NT.
• For $25, add stock quotes to any Web page with Quote Grabber, a pure Java stock quote tracking utility that you can run on any platform using the Java Runtime Environment.
• Get infoUSA's Directory Assistance as a free add-on for your starting page.