Web-based management tools are not very common in the mining industry. Diesh notes that while his is not the only company that has connected its suppliers to its internal mining systems, his is the only one that has provided granularity and security with the capability to view only the information required. For its vendors, access is provided through a Web browser using Citrix Secure Gateway and RSA tokens. Employees access it through Citrix NF use with prior authentication provided by a Novell log-in.

Up next for Newmont: extending the portal application to other Newmont subsidiaries in Peru and Russia. Diesh also plans to increase the number of users in Indonesia from the 170 now to 600 over the course of the year.

Portals serve up shared applications

At Novell Asia Pacific, portals are still doing what they've done for years: connecting employees. CIO Sam Gennaoui of Novell Asia Pacific says Novell's portal is helping the company to get more use out of its internal systems. "Portals allow us to get more ROIROI out of our older systems, which we have spent millions of dollars implementing over the years, and dumb it down to our users - without spending more money Web-enabling these systems and training our users," he says. Alles zu ROI auf CIO.de

Novell provides personalised portals for its employees - a total of6,000 worldwide, 1,200 of whom work in its Asia Pacific offices in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and India. Depending on their profiles, employees can log on to HR, finance or sales systems via the portal. The data presented through the portal is different for every business executive: When Gennaoui logs on to his portal, for instance, he is able to view the state of ICT systems in the region; his VP of Sales and Marketing would view marketing or sales information personalised within the portal.

Though data presented through the portal is different, staff can use core applications to access what they need. They can apply for annual leave and because the system knows who they are and who they report to, the application is automatically routed to their managers' mailboxes for approval, and then to HR. The portal also provides a platform for internal collaboration: sales proposals are routed to users through their different stages of completion - as these proposals have to go through a number of iterations before being submitted to customers - and upon receipt of customers' response.