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An enterprise portal, also known as an enterprise information portal (EIP) or corporate portal, is a framework for integrating information, people and processes across organizational boundaries. It provides a secure unified access point,^[1] often in the form of a web-based user interface, and is designed to aggregate and personalize information through application-specific portlets. One hallmark of enterprise portals is the de-centralized content contribution and content management, which keeps the information always updated.

[edit] History

The mid-1990s saw the advent of public Web portals like AltaVista, AOL, Excite, and Yahoo!. These sites provided a key set of features (e.g., news, e-mail, weather, stock quotes, and search) that were often presented in self-contained boxes or portlets. Before long, enterprises of all sizes began to see a need for a similar starting place for their variety of internal repositories and applications, many of which were migrating to Web-based technologies.^[2]

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. Pioneers in this marketing included "pure play" vendors like Epicentric, Plumtree Software and Viador. The space, however, quickly became crowded by 2002 as both application server vendors (such as BEA, IBM, Passageways and Oracle Corporation) who saw portals as a opportunity to stave off the commoditization of application server technology as well as Business Intelligence vendors began to enter the market with competing product offerings.

Enterprises may choose to develop multiple enterprise portals based on business structure and strategic focus while reusing architectural frameworks, component libraries, or standardized project methodologies (e.g. B2E, B2C, B2B, B2G, etc.).

In 2003, vendors of Java-based enterprise portals produced a standard known as JSR-168. It was to specify an API for interoperability between enterprise portals and portlets. Software vendors began producing JSR-168 compliant portlets that can be deployed onto any JSR-168 compliant enterprise portal. The draft for the second iteration of the standard, JSR-286, is currently under public review.

[edit] Fundamental Features

• Single Point of Entry — enterprise portals can provide single sign-on capabilities between their users and various other systems. This requires a user to authenticate only once. Access control lists manage the mapping between portal content and services over the portal user base.
• Integration — the connection of functions and data from multiple systems into new components/portlets.
• Federation — the integration of content provided by other portals, typically through the use of WSRP or similar technologies.
• Personalization — 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.
• Permissioning — the ability for portal administrators 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.

[edit] Common Applications

• Content Management System
• Document Management System
• Collaboration Software
• Customer Relationship Management
• Business Intelligence
• Email Management
• Intranet

[edit] Enterprise Portal Vendors

[edit] References

1. ^ Boye, Janus (2005-01-18). "Portal Software: Passing Fad or Real Value?". CMS Watch.
2. ^ Knorr, Eric (2004-01-09), "The new enterprise portal", InfoWorld, http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/01/09/02FEportal_1.html 

[edit] External links

• SharePoint Magazine
• Intranet Portal Guide - A guide for Project Managers
• 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
• Vendor-independent comparison of GridSphere, Liferay and uPortal
• Intranet Maturity Framework
• Top Intranet Trends: Usability, Access, Personalization