Using Open Source For PortalsUsing Open Source For Portals

Open-source software has become an equalizer for smaller companies, providing inexpensive access to tools that can increase productivity. In some cases, open-source software complements more-established software packages. In others, open source competes head on.

Metadot Corp.'s Portal Server manages to cover both categories. As an open-source tool for quickly building Web sites and portals, it can augment products from Plumtree Software Inc. or Vignette Corp. But, in a classic example of open source versus Microsoft, Metadot also competes in the same space as SharePoint Portal Server.

Companies or departments with up to 3,000 employees can use Metadot as their primary intranet or Web-site tool, says Daniel Guermeur, Metadot's president and founder. Guermeur in 2000 launched Metadot, governed by the General Public License, as an open-source project. Within a year, and with backing from his former employer, Schlumberger Ltd., Guermeur launched a company based on selling services around the open-source portal tool.

Demand will only increase for open-source alternatives to many of the software products that companies buy today, Guermeur says. Advantages of open source include the collaborative nature of development and a lack of product-licensing costs. Contributors to the underlying open-source project regularly submit new features, called gizmos, that let Metadot users add discussions, polls, files, surveys, and calendars to their intranet pages.

Organic Valley Family of Farms, the largest organic cooperative in the United States, uses Metadot to build and manage about a dozen intranet sites. IT director George Neill chose it because it was easy to implement, had the features he was looking for, and required little effort to get management buy-in.

Neill checked out Plumtree and Vignette first. "Our needs were met in Metadot, and I didn't have to pay $50,000 or $100,000 that I didn't have," he says. Neill and his 14-member IT staff are using Metadot to build an extranet that can be accessed by the cooperative's farmers.