Sun signs portal deal with Yahoo

Looking to boost the take-up of its corporate portal products, Sun Microsystems has signed a deal with Yahoo to provide content and services to the Sun ONE (Open Net Environment) Portal Server.

The deal suits Yahoo which is increasingly looking to offset the downturn in internet advertising with new revenue streams from its web content services.

According to the companies, Sun ONE Portal Server customers will be offered a free 120-day trial of Yahoo Enterprise Edition.

If users decide to keep the Yahoo services, they can sign up for a per-user subscription plan. Exact pricing for the package was not given.

According to April 2002 figures from Nielsen/NetRatings, Yahoo is the second most visited website among surfers at work, after Microsoft.

By including this personalised content employees will be drawn directly to the same content but alongside corporate information, Sun said.

Sun ONE Portal Server will feature access to Yahoo's more than 2,000 content sources from 25 countries and in 13 languages starting in the third quarter this year, according to the company.

The Yahoo content will appear in 'portlets' which can be made to fit the role of the individual corporate user depending on their job requirements, said Sun.

Known until recently as the iPlanet Portal Server, Sun ONE Portal Server offers ecommerce portal deployment, membership management, personalisation, security, integration and search services.

Sun plans to integrate Yahoo Enterprise Edition into version 6.0 of Sun ONE Portal Solution.