When online.ie launched last week, it did so slightly late and with parts missing. However the launch sent a shiver through the Irish web business and specifically through the ISP management. In publicity, it was claimed that Online.ie would be to the Irish web what AOL or Yahoo is to the rest of the world. At the moment, there is no competition to Online.ie and certainly most ISPs are incapable of competing on the same scale. Online.ie will be more akin to Yahoo than AOL.

The technology of Online.ie seems to be impressive. It is largely built around the Open Source AOLserver webserver with Oracle database backing. In short it is a database backed website. Some other elements such as PHP are used though the workhorse is the AOL Dynamic Pages (ADP) scripting language. Webpages are served dynamically and as such this allows for a lot of customisation for the user. It is really a service that is aimed at the user. To date, the ISPs have confused the web with broadcast and there is very little customisation available.

Online.ie will definitely take traffic away from the existing ISP websites. However users are not likely to stay at the ISP website anyway unless there is an overwhelming breadth and depth of content. At the moment Online.ie is acting as an collator of information placing links and syndicated articles in various subsites called channels. In the future, Online.ie will add locally generated content to these channels. In short, it is to be the place to go for the Irish internet user.

The launch has put the writing on the wall for the other ISPs and players. Traditionally the ISPs did not pay much attention to their own sites. This is changing and IOL has one of the more powerful content management systems at its disposal, Vignette Storyserver. However it has a problem in that it doesn´t have the ideas for a good site. Eircom has a lot of ideas but does not seem to have the content management engine or strategy. The Local Ireland, unwisely purchased by Eircom some time ago, version of NuaPublish is a joke and they need to do something fast if they are to survive the Online.ie onslaught. Oceanfree is really just an Oirish version of a UK site with a really bad paint job. Of the Irish ISPs, Indigo is probably the sharpest on the portal side of things. Its site is well constructed and also takes links and content from other sites. But it concentrates on selling value added services.