Choosing The Right Enterprise Portal Solution
Not choosing the right type of portal-solution often negates the benefits associated with it. Variations in portal functionalities become essential to suit specific business requirements. For example a Business Intelligence (BI) portal will include online analytics and reporting functionalities, which need not be a part of an E-Marketplace portal. On the other hand an E-Marketplace portal will include legal and regulatory compliance frameworks, which need not be part of a BI Portal. In this section we have listed the different types of portals that can be deployed across an enterprise integrating various systems.
At a macro level, Enterprise Portals can be categorized into Enterprise Information Portals and E-Business Portals.
Enterprise Information Portal
Integrates information across the enterprise and streamlines B2E processes. They include
Specific-System Portal - Primarily assists in providing better access to information related to specific systems within an enterprise. For example - Business Intelligence (BI), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Human Resources (HR), Sales & Distribution (S&D), Supply Chain Management (SCM), etc. They collaborate Portal functionalities with functionalities of the various systems within enterprise and assist in decision-making.
Cross-System Portal - Cuts across all systems within an enterprise and enable internal collaboration of employees from various departments. For example - Enterprise Collaboration Portals (ECP), Enterprise Knowledge Portals (EKP). They provide virtual-unified workplaces for employees and help with documentation, content management & knowledge management.
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E-Business Portal
Enables easy access to information and henceforth streamlines B2C and B2B processes. They include
Extended Enterprise E-Business Portal - Enables extension of the enterprise to its customers and suppliers using the World Wide Web. They also enable easy collaboration of the customer or supplier with the enterprise for customer service, self-service, ordering, billing shipment etc.
E- Marketplace Portal - Provides an online forum to sell and buy goods. They match buyers and sellers and facilitate the exchange of information, goods, services, and payments associated with market transactions. For example Oracle Exchange (Oracle Exchange enables buying and selling business goods and services on the web).
A best practice increasingly followed is providing a comprehensive portal implementation that integrates information from all the systems within an enterprise. Such an implementation will typically include modules from all types of portals blended within a single architecture.
Another approach to choosing the right portal solution is based on currently existing servers and applications within the organization. For example if an organization has deployed SAP's suite of packaged applications then choosing an SAP enterprise portal could provide considerable cost savings in deploying the portal solution. The different types of portal vendors are listed below.
Application Server Suite Portal Vendors (IBM, Oracle, BEA, and Sun) - Solutions from these vendors integrate business processes, enterprise applications, structured & unstructured data etc into a single package that combines with the vendor's existing application server.
Application Package Suite Portal Vendor (SAP) - Solutions from this vendor integrate the vendor's operational package applications into a single portal environment.
Independent Portal Vendors (Microsoft, Plumtree, Interwoven and Vignette) - Solutions from these vendors provide key features like categorization, search, personalization with collaboration and content management services, business intelligence tools, etc. Top
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