White Papers

Musings On Internet Portals
..and how IBM can take a leadership role!  

July 1, 1998

I wrote this paper in mid-1998 at the request of Lou Gerstner to try to help top management understand the Portal-mania that was rampant then.  I proposed that IBM stay away from the consumer portal space and concentrate on building a new business to business portal.

From the conclusion: IBM has an opportunity here to exploit its considerable cross-division strengths by building a robust, secure, reliable and comprehensive business-to-business portal.  We still need a directory and more research into how this portal benefits our customers and our financials.  But the experience of the consumer portals is potentially invaluable to us.  We need to agree that we have the will to venture into an unknown space and innovate a new and powerful business opportunity.  We can and should…  lead.

JBL                    PortalCombat.PDF