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Begin with the most generic term. A "portal", on the Web, is any single point of access to information which is linked from various logically related internet based applications and of interest to various types of users.
In the early days of the Internet, most portals were what would now be called Personal Portals, ranging in content all the way from the Smith family's personal webpage to the greater content provided by service organizations such as AOL, Netscape and Yahoo!. The point was to provide information and entertainment and, in the latter cases, make these so interesting that users could at first be charged for it and later would stick around long enough to be exposed to the ads.
As user volume on the Internet grew, businesses realized that websites could be used to capture information as well as provide it. Applications were developed to receive, manipulate, report and store the information, which could then be transferred to other departments within the business organization and used for outreach to the customers who had originally supplied it. A next step was the realization that the information could be used to customize the way the web page was presented, allowing the automation of many of the repetitive customer support processes and tailoring the presentation to the real-time needs of the specific customer. And finally, rather than require users to identify themselves to each application via a series of WebPages, single sign-on (SSO) methods were devised, where users needed to identify and authenticate themselves only once, on one page, through which access to the whole rich application suite could be gained. The resulting personalized, secured, SSO-accessed web page through which the customer saw the company's business became an "Enterprise Portal", and the Internet became a business tool in its own right.
Specifically, an Enterprise Portal may be defined as means to provide Web access, for a controlled set of users, to a framework that connects information, people and processes across organizational boundaries. Examples of this are:
- Reducing call center costs by providing interactive on-line support
- Providing just-in-time inventory management support to customers
- Managing the storing and provision of documents
- Supporting automated intra-company process and information flows, thereby ensuring consistency of operation and adherence to standards.
- Capturing statistics regarding use, inventory, and performance that can be combined to monitor and report the company's business.
- Doing all of the above, while at the same time providing secure and personalized access control, such that customers, partners, and employees are each able to access those parts, and only those parts, of the system that they are entitled to use.
From the above list, it may be seen that Enterprise Portals themselves may be broken down into three other types. A Customer Portal is one whose purpose is support the sales process, by providing a means for individuals outside the company to gain ready access to products and technical support. A Partner Portal is one designed to enhance the business process with other companies. And an Internal Portal is one which is used to manage the flow of information within the company itself.
In today's practice, the Enterprise mixes and matches all of these approaches as needed, to support a broad spectrum of specific business projects, ranging all the way from such uses as a full corporate site to HR self-services to the capture and management of business performance indicators.
Why Enterprise Portal Software?
An Enterprise Portal Software product is a toolkit, one that enables enterprises trying to develop any of the portal types we have mentioned. The toolkits of course will come in a widely varying range of capabilities and usefulness, depending upon what functions the manufacturer intends to support. Portal Software vendors will also frequently, and understandably, bias their portal software toward the inclusion of their other products, such as databases and documentation management systems.
But, since the goal is to provide reliable support of the Enterprise, every substantial Enterprise Portal Software package should at a minimum address these areas.
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