A Key to Portals and Portal Products

A Key to Portals and Portal Products

This is a Letter From the Editor for the "Portal Products: How Do You Decide?" issue of Internet Platforms and Web Services.

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The portal product market continues to be one of the hottest and most dynamic markets in the software industry. With more than 100 vendors to choose from, offering a varied list of product functionality, product selection can be extremely challenging. With the depressed state of the economy and resultant waves of industry consolidation crippling the best efforts of many portal product vendors, enterprises will need to be as well informed about portal offerings and portal evaluation criteria as possible.

This education must begin with knowing what a portal is and what it is not. "Portal" is the most-abused term in IT. Gartner defines a portal as "access to and interaction with relevant information, applications and business processes, by select targeted audiences, in a highly personalized manner." Future portals will evolve beyond this access to information assets, to access knowledge and human assets as well. There are multiple kinds of portals, including megaportals, vertical Internet portals, business-to-business (B2B) portals and enterprise portals. Most enterprises are focused on enterprise portals, and the primary path to obtain an enterprise portal is via a portal product.

Now that we've defined this abused and oft-overused term, we can look inside the "ideal" portal to see a collaborative environment of content services and vendor links. But to make a solid portal product investment and construct a portal that gives the enterprise what it's looking for, the enterprise must be able to steer clear of vendor hype and make truly informed decisions.

Depending on the portal product, features and functionality can range widely. Because of this, enterprises evaluating portals will need to match specific organizational requirements (including needs of customers and business partners) with the right product. This is especially important when it comes to a portal's ability to support certain vertical-industry requirements. Portal products provide vertical-industry support by delivering integration components to relevant industry applications, domain-specific taxonomies and domain expertise. Enterprises should also ensure that the portal is equipped to match key standards for IT, such as XML (for data interoperability/exchange), Java (for portal components) and Web services (.NET, Java Web services or both).

But unfortunately, informed portal buying decisions aren't based simply on features and functionality. In "Portal Products: How Do You Decide?" AV-14-4110, we also tackle the implications of having the right portal for your architecture, as well as the potential impact of vendor shakeout on your enterprise.

Whether you're just starting to explore portals and the portal market, or you're ready to build or re-evaluate your portal provider shortlist and check customer references (not just recent implementations), feel free to turn to Gartner for help with the homework.