Corporate informational portal

Unambiguously tells the definition of the term first in the history about purpose of the first portals: "Corporate informational portals (Enterprise Information Portal - EIP) are applications which allow the companies to disclose information which is stored in and out of the organization and to provide to each user uniform access point to the information necessary for acceptance of the justified management decisions intended for him" (Christopher Shaylaks and Julia Tilghman from Merrill Lynch (Christopher C. Shilakes and Julie Tylman, "Enterprise Information Portals", November 1998).

Portals of the first period were used as the tool for the publication of information from the management for the staff of the company. They represented the website with information on the company, on one of pages of which the simple internal forum could be organized. On the portal it was possible to obtain information on the last organizational changes in the company, to get acquainted with news. Besides, the portal performed functions of simple file storage.

With development of technologies of function of portals spread. Since 2000, the staff of the companies began to use the portal for search of necessary information, for obtaining answers to the questions. Portal technologies gained development towards structuring and classification of data, fall forward and efficiency of search of necessary information and also providing a necessary format of representation of the received results. During this period corporate portals began to perform functions of knowledge bases in the different data domains connected with activity of the company.

Gartner determinations

Gartner defines the portal as the personalized point of Web access for the person to relevant data assets (information sources, documents, knowledge bases, applications, business processes and so forth) and to other people via the single user interface using mechanisms of management of access rights and ample opportunities of individual preference. Solving a number of independent problems, portals are also crucial element of the market of management tools corporate content, providing functions of collective work and support of the dokumento-focused business processes. In recent years here find more and more wide applications for Web/Enterprise 2.0 technology, including social networks. Exactly here cloud models begin to find also to themselves the place though still actual level of their use is lower, than it saw two years ago. Integration of portals with Apps Stores became a distinct trend of the last years also.

By Gartner estimates, in 2009 in the world market of horizontal (universal) portals explicit top three (IBM, Microsoft and Oracle) was defined. In 2008 it seemed that SAP will be able to turn top three into the four, but now it is visible that it obviously does not manage it, moreover, possibly she already in the near future should leave a quadrant of leaders. In the 2010th the group of the leading suppliers for the first time included LifeRay company which became the first the product provider of Open Source in this prestigious command. For last year it still managed to be fixed in a segment of leaders, having a little strengthened the positions. Long time seemed that in this quadrant, having made small efforts, Tibco Software will be able to get, but it could not make: this year the company was sharply rolled away in a quadrant of niche players.

Two more potential candidates on getting into group of leaders — Red Hat JBoss and OpenText. But also so far nothing is impossible to them and if the first of them takes all these years actually permanent position in a quadrant of 'applicants', then the second, having strengthened the 'completeness of vision' direction, lowered the level of 'capability to implementation' and as a result moved from category of 'applicants' to group of 'seers'.

Some increase in number of the companies on a quadrant became reflection of process of the continuing market development. Among beginners it is worth selecting first of all Salesforce.com which the example shows possibilities of successful implementation of cloud models of use of IT, and that it is also important, expansions of scope of cloud means. Let's note also that the last year's beginner — the Backbase company — could not just be fixed in a quadrant, but also pass from the list of niche players into group of seers.

And here some other IT suppliers, including from among the leading players of IT market who are mentioned not the first year in the researches Gartner as future potential participants of a quadrant of portal technologies cannot get to it in any way. And first of all in this regard it is necessary to tell about Google. Gartner explains such situation with the insufficient level of security, personalisation and abilities to integrate in products of Google, emphasizing at the same time that these characteristics are very important for corporate customers.

In the market the leading three — IBM, Microsoft and Oracle showing at the same time very differing strategy of actions was created several years ago.

IBM WebSphere Portal provided now by version 7.0 has the big history and experience of application in the market, enjoys recognized confidence of customers, and from outside both business, and IT departments. This solution is often selected as a basis for implementation of the most difficult portal scenarios, including with the combined application of transaction information and unstructured content. It is used both inside, and outside the enterprises, in particular for interorganizational interaction.

Microsoft SharePoint, as we know, appeared in the market as a portal product more than ten years ago, but nevertheless long time was positioned as means of support of group work in the enterprise. However since then the circle of the tasks solved by it very significantly extended, and now its latest version of 2010 quite conforms to requirements of the portal of the corporate level and many customers apply it in the external partner relations and consumers.

Oracle develops at itself portal the direction long ago, having quite big set of products. But the leading role here now belongs to the solution WebCenter Portal as a part of the WebCenter Suite set received as a result of acquisition a few years ago of BEA company. Oracle develops WebCenter Portal within the updated strategy of Enterprise 2.0, representing to the market this product as 'the benevolent user platform for social business'. In general the circle of the means used in it includes actually the portal, management of the Websites, content management and also support of joint work and social networks.

As a rule, corporate portals do not limit a circle of the duties to banal news of the company and press releases. Actually, it is about access to the documentary base demanded by most of workers including non-staff, the organizations of effective interaction of one and all links of corporate network. The corporate portal is in many respects the unified software package. When accounting the sizes of the company it is necessary to emphasize the following advantages of corporate portals:

• Cost reduction, saving of time. A common information space for the geographically distributed company.
• Increase in efficiency and interaction of employees.
• Increase in management efficiency.
• Integration of diverse information systems (ERP EDMS CRM HRM) in a uniform complex.

Advantages and opportunities

In most cases the corporate portal is useful to rather big companies when indications of the management pass several instances until reach the addressee. The EIP systems are simple in configuring and setup. It is easy to adapt and make them the original user interface for any link of users: from finance division to managerial and so-called sales. At the same time as useful options means of the integrated control of presence of employees can serve in office, systems of accounting of working time, the notification. Corporate portals it is in many respects more convenient than outdated methods of mailing on corporate mail - they reduce load of IT department, give the chance of the organization mass offline - discussions, conferences, forums and polls. Implementation of a corporate portal will allow to organize the following systems in a private order:

• Information representation on the global area network
• Informational portal for clients
• The portal of technical and information support for partners and clients
• System of collecting and information analysis
• System of maintaining fund of software tools, documentation
• System of search and preparation of documents

Trends of the market of boxed portals in 2011

By 2010 growth of number of the software products used by the organizations created the need for providing a unified environment for obtaining information from different program sources. For the solution of this task tools for integration of software applications appeared. Use of these technologies during creation of corporate portals provided uniform access point to all applications and content of the organization.

Besides development of new technologies within the last decade raised a role of business communications and joint work of staff of the company with uniform corporate information resources in achievement of goals of business and the organization of effective work. Therefore modern portal solutions provide the integrated set of the unified means for ensuring effective interaction of employees, applications and data and also for joint work of users.

Modern corporate portals are multifunctional systems which solve a set of practical problems - technology and business. Portals provide uniform access point, a possibility of quick search and providing information and give effective tools for knowledge management and interaction of staff of the company.

Moreover, abilities to integrate with other information systems allow to organize uniform storage of public regulatory, operational, management information, industry/functional knowledge, the accumulated experience, held for use all staff of the company, to organize their collective work and a possibility of remote access to necessary information.

Besides, sharing of means of search and setup of information display provides to users necessary tools for a business intelligence. Information from different sources allows to see a picture in general and to receive the necessary detail level for adoption of this or that solution.

At the same time security protections of modern corporate portals give necessary opportunities of setup of the different access levels which exclude unauthorized use and change of information. Thus, modern corporate portals provide a full range of well-tried remedies in order that it is easy to get access to the necessary information, to analyze and transfer necessary data that leads to quality improvement of the made decisions. These systems allow to collect in a whole and to integrate on the basis of roles and tasks all sources of knowledge of different type and information, available both in the organization, and beyond its limits so that necessary data easily could be found, taken and reused in the way, usual for the user.

Experts of Softline carried out the analysis of trends of the market of the replicated corporate portals in 2011. By own estimates of the company, the specific capacity of a segment ready the solutions intranet in Russia in the expiring year was more than $10 million.

Experts of Softline, having analyzed survey results of clients in more than 30 cities of Russia, came to a conclusion that the market of boxed corporate portals in the expiring year showed growth exceeding 200%. By own estimates of the company, in 2011 the specific capacity of the direction ready the solutions intranet in Russia was more than $10 million.

Estimating the market by 2009-2011, Softline notes: clients ceased to select a product, proceeding from the size of initial costs. High speed of deployment became the standard – today practically any boxed portal can be set and configured completely in several hours. At the same time there will even be enough one server to service medium-sized company with the geographically distributed state in several thousands of people. Also the price was stabilized: irrespective of feverish rate fluctuations of world currencies today the average cost of basic edition of a corporate portal for the company up to 400 users is less (about) 3,000 dollars. Reference points on development of modular functionality of the portal, improvement of quality of technical support, a possibility of program and platform expansions also remain in force.

To the forefront there was a new aspect recently – the operating costs after implementation defined generally the platform on which the product is constructed: for clients its "industry", i.e. operating experience around the world, support by the leading world vendors, the maximum popularity, development standardization, "native" integration into the most widespread office software are significant.

Experience of use of corporate portals showed it is expected predictable result: employees work with already available corporate information more willingly, find quicker or place the necessary documents and content. The command spirit in collective promoting the birth of the new fruitful ideas for business growth improves. Heads manage resources of the company more rationally, save the budget and time of subordinates. Shareholders and from every spot on the globe can get acquainted at any moment with fresh reports on cost optimization.

History

The middle of the 90th became a revelation for public web resources. Universal distribution mostly in the West was gained by such portals as AltaVista, AOL, Excite and Altaba (before Yahoo). These websites provided a necessary set of branches which allowed users to return to these websites everyone denyit simply to use them constantly. Of course, it is about such services as news, currency rates, mail, weather and searchers. Eventually large enterprises began to see ample opportunities in such portals which can be traded on and projected with ease by means of this tool "will" on subordinates in a mass order. With respect thereto the mass of the companies transferred corporate systems to web level, including electronic document management systems, financial structures and marketing. The first commercial products began to appear in in 1998. Many software makers began to propose already ready-made solutions which would meet all requirements of the customer - flexible and universal. Such software packages represented wide tools for fast deployment of the portal. As pioneers in this area such companies as BEA, IBM, Passageways, Oracle and Sun Microsystems acted. The enterprises customers could expand, integrate and vybriat components for portals to the taste, focus them on strategic orientation, business interaction. For simplification of their choice and separation of products on the industries, suppliers standardized project methodology by the principles: Business-to-Employee (for employees), Business-to-Consumer (for clients), Business-to-Business (for partners) and to that similar. In 2003 Java manufacturing companies - the focused products approved the standard on development corporate a portalova, known as JSR-168. Due to the extensive promoting of products of the class Open Source there was a large number of freely extended basic models of portals what for example the wiki-engine based on which also ITpedia works is.

EIP: Choice and implementation

At this stage there are several techniques and scenarios according to which the enterprises or IT heads stake on this or that corporate portal, the solution. Nevertheless, the conscious choice is given far not at once. Corporate portal, often, this person of IT department as such, its business card. It is what will be estimated by all employees, beginning from volume management and finishing with "pawns". Today according to research companies it is possible to count about 60 noticeable producers (at the moments of blossoming of the market of EIP it was possible to count also more than one hundred). Unfortunately, most of them in the future or will lose the competitiveness and will be absorbed, or will just stop the activity. Read article "to EIP: Choice and implementation"

Producers of corporate portals and solution

See Also

• Evolution of the market of portals Gartner eyes
• Corporate portal: step to the future