+1 for an enterprise version of Netvibes.
We need an intranet-style start page to tie all of our internal business data together.
Quoting Nik Cubrilovic:
> The most ideal solution we could think of was having something like
> Netvibes, but an enterprise edition that allowed you to setup groups,
> views, permissions, secure connections, auth integration etc. etc
Unfortunately even if Netvibes does build it, I have a suspicion that most businesses will be using a custom start page powered by Google in a few years. Google is attempting to address this much needed space with their yet to be announced Personalized Start Page for your Domain. Nik says it doesn’t have what his company needs, but I bet by this time next year it will. Google’s best products are ones that their own employees use every day, and their employees have been using this sort of intranet-style start page for years. It is nicknamed MOMA.
I want my MOMA!
In the enterprise world, we refer to this as a corporate dashboard. It’s pretty big business. Every manager cares about something different, the CEO wants to see a global perspective (“up-time”, stock price, balance sheet, top five projects by job-cost, bottom five projects by job-cost, vendor relations, etc). But the head of customer relations wants to see things on a more micro scale (avg customer wait time, % up sales, user feedback).
All this data is gathered through the corporate intranet (supposedly) and readily available. These dashboards just provide a sane window into the data. If you need more info, you can generally drill down into it.
I spent a good deal of time working on corporate dashboards at my last job. I actually really got into data warehousing and data mining. It sounds boring, but having all the right info at the right time can mean all the difference in the world when important decisions need to be made.
The problem with this stuff is that it is hard to make a generic solution. No two companies (and no two people at a company) want to see the same information. So the best solution seems to be to make a nice, pluggable interface and let your in-house IT staff customize it.
That said, I can see where a netvibes / google solution would jump out at people as a nice replacement for the EXTREMELY expensive corporate dashboard.