CA World: The portal is the new desktop

Computer Associates (CA) is aiming to take on Microsoft with its new portal software.

The US company believes the corporate portal, where users' personalised applications can be accessed via an internet browser, is the desktop of the future.

CA said it aims to overtake desktop software with its corporate portal technology and that it could became a serious competitor to Microsoft.

Speaking at the company's annual conference, CA World, in Florida, Gary Quinn, executive vice-president of CA, cliamed the portal technology could become a serious alternative to desktop software suites such as Microsoft's Office.

"The portal is the desktop of the future, our customers have shown they have an appetite for it. You can run it on any platform, wireless, Linux, Unix, handheld," he said.

Russell Artzt, VP of research and development at CA, added: "The portal is the future delivery mechanism of applications and the browser-based environment could replace the desktop environment one day."

However, industry analysts remain sceptical.

Christopher Harris-Jones, principal analyst at Ovum, said the current 'fat' client computing model does not allow a portal-based infrastructure to be used in most companies.

He told silicon.com: "The fact is that 95 per cent of the applications around the world are based in the Windows environment. The portal needs an operating system to run because to get a simple word processing application to work via browser requires a fully supportive thin client environment which most companies don't have."

The company plans to announce number of new portal-based products during CA World.