Preface by Björn Rücker

General Manager and Chief of Development Portunity GmbH Germany

Dear Portalsuite user, dear customer,

I would like to take you by your hand in this preface and introduce you to the historical background of our product „Portalsuite“ and of the company „Portunity“ and – of course – I would like to introduce you to the new third generation Portalsuite in hand and its background.

We engage in creating websites, web design and developing dynamic web applications since 1995. In 1996 we entered the young market of internet service providing with our own dial-up and server technology. Still today our providing department offers the full scope of internet services, mainly for bigger customers in Germany.

Several regional portals (city webs) and web applications for customers led to - besides a lot of experience - the development of various software for these communities. In 1998 and 1999 we developed an all-inclusive Content Management System based on the single applications and solutions. Content Management already existed at that time, however the market was pretty small, compared with nowadays, and big companies often targeted at big customers with their efforts. Already at that time we focussed on our goal: enabling our customers to update their websites themselves - and to make this work as easy as possible.

By acquiring regional customers, we concentrated on a very different target group than the existing Content Management suppliers. Our target group had their own ideas of Content Management. Those demands led to the first generation of Portalsuite software, at that time developed with the CGI language „ASP“ by Microsoft, running on Windows NT servers only.

In the middle of 1999 we started redeveloping the second generation Portalsuite from scratch. The main reason for the redevelopment was the aim of converting our software to the programming language PHP. Primary we wanted to become more independent from platforms and to meet the needs of internet service providers better, who predominantly used Linux surroundings. For the first time we wanted to sell the new version also as pure software package to internet service providers, agencies and web designers, who did not host their websites on our server. In order to emphasize this new field of business and to communicate this new strategic line, we started operating under the name of Portunity GmbH at the time of the Portalsuite 2000 product launch in the beginning of the year 2000. Our legal form was changed at the same time.

In the years 2000 and 2001 we advanced the software significantly. We received much customer feedback and realized plenty of that. Several additional modules, our add-ons, originated out of it. In spring of the year 2001 we released a Light version which was offered for free download and use. Many thousands of companies and people downloaded the software and use the Portalsuite 2001 Light and Advanced version today.

But the expansion in the years 2000 and 2001 brought many new tasks to solve. Portunity almost doubled its number of employees and our key-product’s source code duplicated within even shorter intervals. For this reason we decided to redevelop a new, third Portalsuite generation from scratch again at the turn of the year 2000. Again we wanted to bring the new experiences of the past months and years into this third generation, to accommodate the expansion and the new customer demands – and, of course, we wanted to place a competitive product onto a market that had changed and grown a lot in the meantime.

The Portalsuite 2002 is more than just another usual product relaunch, more than a new version with a new version number and a new, admittedly, very beautiful graphic user interface. After twelve months of development the Portalsuite 2002 is a powerful and modern Content Management application which addresses a very wide target group: We cover the whole variety of users, from beginners to programming professionals, with the Portalsuite 2002. We advanced and scaled the Portalsuite 2002 from our starting basis downwards and upwards with equal measures.

Interim more than ten Portunity employees work on development and product design. Programmers, designer, copywriter, translators, quality assurance and marketing experts contributed to this inventive product, the Portalsuite 2002. Seeing the Portalsuite 2002 growing up was a lot of fun not only to myself as Chief of Development and General Manager of the Portunity GmbH, but also to the whole team, which was highly motivated and involved with all their heart. I believe I may state that this ambition is recognizable in the current grown-up product. I would like to thank my great team here again.

I also would like to cater briefly to another premiere here. The Portalsuite 2002 is not only released bilingual in English and German, but for the first time also in French, Italian and Dutch. Further languages will follow within the year 2002. Therewith the Portalsuite 2002 is characterized by European influence – just in time, since we finally have the Euro as our new currency ;)

The Portunity GmbH places a new generation of Content Management Software within the next weeks and months of the year 2002 worldwide - „Made in Europe“ – and is happy to welcome you aboard (again). We like to thank our regular customers for their patience and their trust emphatically.

I myself and the team of the Portunity GmbH wish you success in exploring the Portalsuite 2002 and in using it for your projects and customers with all our heart. And – we wish you as much fun and enthusiasm as we had developing it.

Wuppertal, 29 December 2001

Björn Rücker, General Manager and Chief of Development, Portunity GmbH Deutschland