ENTERPRISE_PORTAL

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An 'enterprise portal', also known as an ''enterprise information portal'', is a framework for integrating information, people and processes across organizational boundaries. It provides a single point of entry,^[1] often in the form of a web-based user interface, and is designed to aggregate information through application-specific portlets.

History

The mid-1990s saw the advent of public 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. Many of these early products were built off a particular application server and vendors saw them as a chance to stave off the commoditization of application server technology. 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.

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.

★ '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.

★ '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.

Common Applications

★ Content Management System

★ Document Management System

★ Collaboration Software

★ Customer Relationship Management

★ Business Intelligence