In the coming weeks, Epicentric will announce details of these partnerships that will enable it to provide the most comprehensive range of services and applications to companies creating full-service custom portals for their employees, customers, and users. These will include partnerships in the areas of content and services, commerce, distribution, integration and development. Epicentric will leverage these partnerships as integrated modules that will ship with the Epicentric Portal Server. By providing our customers with this wealth of services and applications along with the ability to integrate their own unique enterprise applications and content, we allow them to build compelling customized portals with total ownership of branding, hosting, and design.
Analysts agree that the market for corporate portals is immense.
According to the Gartner Group, fifty percent of companies will implement an intranet portal by 2001. In a recent study, online research firm Decision Tree found that three quarters of all employees would rather access news, financial information and conduct business via the company Website. By providing a wide range of services and applications to its employees and customers, companies using the Epicentric Portal Server can keep its constituents focused on the company's goals, products, and services and increase the effective usage of its intranet or Website. We feel that access to the Epicentric Portal Network will greatly increase Stockpoint's distribution of financial applications. This partnership with Epicentric's portal solution allows us to easily expand into the enterprise sector as a valuable part of a full-service portal interface for users.