You call the National Weather Service, they'll give you as much data as you can handle. Steve Dille, Viador's vice president of marketing, says the advantage of the portal model is its breadth. We set a broader context. To accentuate that big-tent philosophy, Viador has published all of its application programming interfaces. This makes it easy to plug customer relationship management tools and other products into a Viador framework, Dille says.
Speed is another advantage of portal-style exchanges.
Viador claims implementation times as short as several weeks. This phase is simple in a portal-based system, because the only thing customers need is an access password. You don't need to worry about details. IT organizations planning private exchanges must define goals early and watch out for creeping implementation costs, experts say. With the field in its infancy, vendors are jostling for position, changing their claims almost weekly and often promising more than they can deliver.