By Simon Hodgson
These days even oil companies are going prospecting in the e-business and portal market. Shell Services International Ltd (SSI), the IT services arm of oil company Royal Dutch Shell Group, intends to be among the top three portal vendors and says it will get there inside 18 months. SSIÆs offering is built around its Kalido data warehouse package, which uses an Oracle 8i database and tools to customize the warehouse for the customerÆs business.
Kalido was developed by Shell for its internal businesses, but in June, the company decided it might as well make money commercially and released version five, aimed at the financial services, telecoms, utilities, retail and pharmaceuticals markets (CI No 3,679). So far, SSI has installed over 100 Kalido systems and business is brisk, according to SSI’s business development manager Linda Hickman. SSI as a whole represents revenue of $1bn within ShellÆs $125bn business, but Hickman declined to disclose exactly how big a chunk Kalido provides.
Last week, database vendor Sybase Inc said it was aiming for the number one portal position. Hickman is confident that KalidoÆs tools to customize data warehouses iteratively give it the edge over SybaseÆs pre-configured industry data warehousing templates which she says do not change alongside the customer.
KalidoÆs customizing tools are based on a metadata management system which can turn disparate data into comprehensible and structured data for distribution. The system is patent pending, so SSI is wary of speaking precisely about the underlying technology. In version six, scheduled for testing in February and release at the end of the second quarter, SSI will offer an extensible mark-up language (XML) toolkit to allow developers to customize the interfaces used by KalidoÆs XML server. Kalido runs on Windows NT, IBM AIX and HP-UX.
One element of the portal puzzle which the company does not possess is a reporting tool with which customers can turn all the data they have accessed into useful information. SSI is in talks with a reporting firm and expects to have the partnership completed by the end of the first quarter. The company has partnerships with Andersen Consulting for systems integration and with Informatica Corp, for decision support.
For all its technology, SSIÆs ambitions in the portal arena could be hampered by its lack of visibility. Shell has fingers in many pies, but it is primarily known for its oil interests, and SSI may have to spin out to win the largest contracts. Hickman says that the company has benefited in the past from the Shell brandname and that customers like to feel they are doing business with a household name. Kalido is, by HickmanÆs own admission, a very hot prospect right now, and she said a spin-off is not out of the question.
