Enterprise portal
An enterprise portal, also known as an enterprise information portal (EIP), is a framework for integrating information, people and processes across organizational boundaries in a manner similar to the more general
One hallmark of enterprise portals is the de-centralized content contribution and content management, which keeps the information always updated. Another distinguishing characteristic is that they cater for customers, vendors and others beyond an organization's boundaries.[2] This contrasts with a corporate portal which is structured for roles within an organization.
History
The mid-1990s saw the advent of public
By the late 1990s, software vendors began to produce prepackaged enterprise portals. These software packages would be toolkits for enterprises to quickly develop and deploy their own customized enterprise portal. The first commercial portal software vendor began to appear in 1998. By 2002, competing product offerings from
Employee portal
A study conducted in 2006 by Forrester Research, Inc. showed that 46 percent of large companies used a portal referred to as an employee portal. Employee portals can be described as a specific set of enterprise portals and are used to give an interface for employees to personalized information, resources, applications, and e-commerce options.[4]
Lean portal
In 2009,
Fundamental features
An enterprise portal has two main functions; integration and presentation.[6] It must be able to access information from multiple and varied sources and manipulate that information through the portal.
Other common features include;
- Single sign-on — enterprise portals can provide single sign-on capabilities between their users and various other systems. This requires a user to authenticate only once.
- Integration — the connection of functions and data from multiple systems into new components/portlets/web parts with an integrated navigation between these components.
- Federation — the integration of content provided by other portals, typically through the use of WSRP or similar technologies.
- Customization — Users can customize the look and feel of their environment. Customers who are using EIPs can edit and design their own web sites which are full of their own personality and own style; they can also choose the specific content and services they prefer. Also refers to the ability to prioritize most appropriate content based on attributes of the user and metadata of the available content.
- Personalization — Personalization is more about matching content with the user. Based on a user profile, personalization uses rules to match the "services", or content, to the specific user. To some degree, you can think of the two like this: customization is in hands of the end user, personalization is not. Of course actual personalization is often based on your role or job function within the portal context.
- Access control — the ability for portal to limit specific types of content and services users have access to. For example, a company's proprietary information can be entitled for only company employee access. This access rights may be provided by a portal administrator or by a provisioning process. Access control lists manage the mapping between portal content and services over the portal user base.
- Enterprise search — search enterprise content using enterprise search.
- Omni channel enablement — present the pages optimally on all channels and devices.[7]
- Analytics — track and monitor user behaviour on portal pages (such as navigation, clicks, downloads, page exits and such) and generate reports.
Marketplace
In 2014, independent analyst firm Real Story Group divided the Enterprise Portals technology marketplace into two categories: Infrastructure and Specialist vendors.[8] The two categories include ten vendors that the firm evaluates in its Enterprise Portals Report.[9]
Common applications
- Content Management System
- Document Management System
- Collaboration Software
- Business process management systems
- Customer Relationship Management
- Business Intelligence
- Intranet
- Wiki
- Blog
- RSS
- Knowledge Management System
See also
References
- ^ Boye, Janus (2005-01-18). "Portal Software: Passing Fad or Real Value?". CMS Watch.[permanent dead link]
- ISBN 0814425607. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
- ^ Knorr, Eric (2004-01-09). "The new enterprise portal". InfoWorld. Archived from the original on 2007-09-10.
- ^ Urbach, Nils (2009-11-19). "An empirical investigation of employee portal success". Elsevier.
- ^ "So, What is a Lean Portal Really? | Backbase Blog". Backbase. Archived from the original on 2013-01-19.
- ISBN 1411661591. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
- ISBN 978-1498725491.
- ^ 2014 Enterprise Portals Logo Landscape Archived 2014-06-07 at the Wayback Machine. Real Story Group Blog (04 June 2014). Retrieved on 04 June, 2014.
- ^ Portals & Content Integration Research Report Archived 2014-06-07 at the Wayback Machine. Real Story Group (June, 2014). Retrieved on 04 June, 2014.
External links
- JSR 286: Portlet Specification 2.0
- JSR 168: Portlet Specification
- Defining the Enterprise Information Portal
- Recasting Data Access, Putting A Fresh Face On The Intranet Via Enterprise Information Portals – Distributed Computing, Remi duBois
- Intranet portal solutions die, evolve & move to Intranet 2.0
- Top Intranet Trends: Usability, Access, Personalization
- Ph.D. Thesis based on Enterprise Portal explaining about the major characteristics, development methodology, etc.