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Smart Enterprise Suites
Written by Håkan Ståby   

What is it? Why do we need it?

The first wave

Gartner predicts the advent of so called Smart Enterprise Suites. Different vendors are beginning to market this as the latest technology trend and describe how their products are now integrated as Smart Enterprise Suites.

What is a Smart Enterprise Suite?

A Smart Enterprise Suite (SES) is a set of aggregated functionality from previously separate applications. A typical suite will integrate Content Management, Collaboration, Information organization and retrieval, Expertise location and Management, Community Technology, Process Support (workflows) and a Portal framework to keep it all together.

Who needs a Smart Enterprise Suite?

The SES is the way to rationalize the use of groupware, intranet and portal technology. Knowledge as competitive advantage, increased amounts of information, global collaboration and the need for extranet capabilities are driving this virtualization of workplaces where integration of various applications is already done.

Depending on maturity, organizations have acquired and implemented some or many of the applications that are part of a typical SES and are now looking to lower costs and to achieve synergies from integrating the applications in one portal. The most cost effective way would be to obtain a SES where the integration is already done and reduce the cost for each separate application, but this will however require a substantial change to already installed systems.

Read more in these articles from Gartner:

The Smart Enterprise Suite Is Coming: Do We Need It?
The First Wave of Smart Enterprise Suites

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