Web portals are among the most important enterprise applications that information technology departments are currently asked to produce. This is because portals have significant potential to transform how organizations do work and conduct business. Using portals, organizations can streamline processes and transactions, increase employee productivity, and strengthen relationships with customers and partners.

However, portals and especially the management of multiple portals, also represent a substantial technical challenge. Creating and maintaining portals of any type has broad implications across the IT infrastructure. Issues such as deployment, content sharing, security, workflow, integration, ease-of-use and more, are straining already overloaded developers and IT departments. Furthermore, these challenges continue to increase in complexity as business objectives drive demand not only for more portals, but for portals with increasingly sophisticated capabilities, created and modified in less time than ever before.

IT departments can reduce the complexity and time required to deploy and manage portal solutions by viewing portals not as discrete, independent projects, but instead as a broad, enterprise-wide endeavor. In essence, the problem is not how to deploy and maintain “the portal,” but rather how to equip the enterprise with a comprehensive framework to create, maintain and modify any type of portal required to meet business needs - both now and in the future.

For a number of years, organizations have implemented technology to help deal with business challenges. Over time, they develop a collection of solutions to improve efficiency, and choose software that is appropriate to the problem at hand. While this evolution is cost-effective in the short term, the process itself ultimately causes problems. Organizations are left with a series of unrelated technologies, documents stored in different formats and locations, and a multitude of incompatible applications. This can be a major problem for anyone who interacts with the organization. Efficiency is compromised: Users often require training in multiple applications, are forced to retrieve and save documents in multiple locations, and in many cases need to re-enter data multiple times. This increases costs for the organization, and results in poor service to employees, customers, and partners.

What is a portal?

The word portal has been defined in many different ways even within an IT context. To understand Flatbox portal technologies, it is important to define the term.

A portal is a collection of information, applications, and services that are aggregated in a useful way. This collection helps users consume information in a contextual, discoverable, and relevant environment.

This definition encompasses a wide variety of solutions, ranging from a Web site that provides a starting point for access to corporate information to an integrated framework and infrastructure for delivering applications. In many organizations, the need for collaboration around information and business processes is the key driver for a portal. In others, the top-down dissemination of information and exposure of business applications are the most important criteria. Customer-facing portals range from simple information sites to complex Web applications delivering personalized information and applications. The specific nature of a portal will depend on what needs to be aggregated and the needs of users, but all portals have one aim in common: to allow users to interact with organizations efficiently and seamlessly.

Portal Categories

Flatbox categorizes portals according to their function and target audience. Portals typically fall into one of the following five categories:

• Internet Presence Portal
• Internet Commerce Portal
• Information Aggregation Portal
• Collaboration Portal
• Personal and Team Portal

Internet Presence Portal

This type of portal generally takes the form of an external Web site aimed at customers and/or partners. It focuses on providing information, often pulling content from a number of sources within the organization and presenting it in a uniform manner. This portal generally contains some or all of the following features:

• The ability to customize content and presentation on a per-user basis
• Flexible content management and publishing
• Information aggregation
• Search capabilities
• Thorough analysis of user interaction with the portal

Internet Commerce Portal

This type of portal also takes the form of an external Web site, but it is focused on selling products and services to customers and/or partners. An Internet commerce portal will normally encompass many of the features of an Internet presence portal. However, it will also provide e-commerce functionality, and may also interact with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. It will generally contain some or all of the following features:

• The ability to customize content and presentation on a per-user basis
• The ability to profile customers and target relevant products and services at them
• Flexible content and catalog management and publishing
• Information aggregation
• Search capabilities
• The ability to analyze user interaction with the portal

Information Aggregation Portal

This type of portal may be purely internal, but may also be available externally to partners. It is focused on gathering together information and applications in a useful form for employees and/or partners. It will generally include some or all of the following features:

• The ability to customize content and presentation on a per-user basis
• Flexible content and document management and publishing
• Business intelligence (BI) features
• Information aggregation
• Search capabilities
• A system for classifying documents and showing the relationships between them
• Integration with enterprise applications

Collaboration Portal

This type of portal is often purely internal, but may also be available to selected partners. Collaboration portals are generally defined on a project-by-project basis, and are created to allow employees and/or partners to work together on the project. It will generally include some or all of the following features:

• Flexible document management and publishing
• Information aggregation
• Search capabilities
• The ability to classify documents and show the relationships between them
• Discussion capabilities

Personal and Team Portal

This type of portal is normally internal to the organization. Its purpose is to help employees to share information with their co-workers. Often, multiple personal and team portals exist within an organization, enabling employees in particular workgroups to collaborate. Personal and team portals will generally include some or all of the following features.

• Flexible document management and publishing
• Ability for authorized users to update their own content and manage user privileges
• Personalized experiences for employees
• Discussion capabilities

Flatbox Portal Technologies

By deploying enterprise software such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Content Management Server, Microsoft SharePoint™ Portal Server, SharePoint Team Services from Microsoft, and Microsoft Commerce Server, organizations strengthen their ability to build and deploy portals. For example, Office is widely used to author information available through portals, and Commerce Server is frequently used to provide e-commerce, analytics, or marketing-focused personalization to an Internet commerce portal.

The true power of Flatbox portal technologies comes from taking advantage of the close relationships between the available components. Flatbox recognizes that most portals require a combination of predefined components alongside some individualized components, and does not limit developers to predefined relationships between products. Flatbox portals are built on the .NET Application Framework. The framework uses XML Web service standards and allows applications to connect with software and services across platforms, applications, and programming languages. The .NET Framework is the foundation of Flatbox's portal strategy and allows developers to create unique solutions that enhance the capabilities of existing, proven technologies. The .NET Framework provides a critical element of any portal solution: interoperability from the desktop to various network systems.