By Jennifer Mears
Network World, 09/24/01
The term portal denotes everything from a souped-up Web site
to a turbo-charged intranet. Add the word "enterprise" and the hype
machine purrs even louder. More than 100 vendors are peddling enterprise portal
software products today, but analysts predict that fewer than a dozen will
survive the mass consolidation taking place in the industry. Those vendors
that fail are likely to be hawking products that are little more than a pretty
intranet front end, with weak integration abilities and uncertain security.
"Every one is coming in these days and saying they have
a portal version of their software," says Dave Snyder, director of e-application
services at Unisys, in Blue Bell, Pa. "You've really got to break it down
and find out: Do they have a flexible front end, and do they have an architecture
to bring in your back-end systems?"
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Such back-end integration is clearly the key to today's
enterprise portal, which has become a front end where users do everything
from view legacy data to collaborate with colleagues. Companies that have
successfully implemented such portals find them be the oil that keeps their
businesses running as companies throw more resources and applications onto
their networks. Unisys' enterprise portal gives users a single interface
for grabbing data from the company's critical database systems, such as
Siebel's customer data repositories, PeopleSoft's human resource stores
and Oracle's financial data sheets. The portal serves up unstructured data
such as internal memos, e-mail and Web pages, too.
Likewise,
the portal built by the American Institute of Architects gives
its members highly personalized access to the organization's resources,
regardless of the user's location. J.P. Morgan American Century
implemented a portal that let it convert paper reports to electronic
and consequently saved the company millions (see Putting
a portal to use).
So the hype holds some truth when it claims that portals are
proven money and time savers. Nevertheless, those claims don't apply unilaterally.
As a network executive, you must choose portal software that will reduce network
traffic by streamlining access to internal and external functions. You'll
also need to avoid a portal that creates a bottleneck when advanced features,
such as collaboration, are added. Of course, you'll need to ensure the portal
doesn't open the network for attack. After all that, you've got to make
sure that the portal vendor chosen will be among those few expected winners
- or be bought, integrated and supported by one.
Riding the network
Companies commonly look to portals to replace fat clients
of legacy applications with a browser, which reduces traffic and makes the
network faster. "Because it's Web-based, the portal is a benefit, not
a hurt," says Jeff Cohen, CIO of JetBlue Airlines, which uses Microsoft's
SharePoint portal server to personalize access to online FAA flight manuals,
customer service and payroll applications, and homegrown applications that
measure such things as ontime flight arrivals and departures. "It doesn't
take up bandwidth like client-server applications do."
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Questions to ask portal vendors
Is the portal architecture firewall-friendly with support for single-sign on?
Does the portal use proprietary APIs or XML or a combination to integrate with existing back-end systems?
What standards does the product currently support, and which standards are slated for support?
Are applications and resources available to authorized users from any device?
Can the portal be distributed among various servers to scale, and if not, how will the portal scale as applications and users are added?
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But should you want to use the portal to support more complex
functions, you may need to prep your infrastructure. Real-time collaboration
using video is the extreme example, but even news tickers, file sharing, whiteboards
or other forms of real-time data may spike traffic, not reduce it.
Unisys had already upgraded its network's routers to support
streaming audio and video, and didn't experience performance problems with
its portal built on software from DataChannel. However, Unisys' Snyder advises
network executives to analyze packet size so network load doesn't come as
a surprise. Unisys, which will have 34,000 portal users worldwide by year-end,
plans on eventually adding online corporate communities and document sharing
to its portal. Snyder says laboratory tests will determine if the network
needs tuning, such as distributing more servers.
How a vendor structures its client and server code is also
important because it dictates how applications are presented and accessed.
Some vendors depend on a locally installed client application to render the
data from the legacy application in a browser window, instead of connecting
to applications and authenticating remotely as the portal user.
"For example, Viador's connectivity to Outlook
is merely a toolbar for launching the various Outlook components
already installed on the desktop," The Burton Group's Gary
Hein says. Not a good situation if you're looking for a portal
that moves as the user does.
To determine how the portal software connects, users should
check to see if it requires user information or has thin-client capabilities,
such as launching a Citrix or Windows Terminal Server session. The easiest
method is to run the portal on a clean machine, with no applications installed
or configured, and see if the portal still works.
Securing access
On the other hand, portals that let users roam raise security
issues. While protecting the data as they convert from legacy systems to IP
is easily solved with good encryption, access control is the bigger risk.
The beauty - and danger - of a portal is its single point of access. Portals
that offer single sign-on store authentication requirements for multiple systems,
making the portal's repositories prime targets for hackers.
Making sure the vendor provides strong authentication encryption,
such as Triple-DES or RSA, is the first step. Auditing capabilities are also
important so that network administrators can track unusual behavior. One easy
check that only authorized users can gain access to the software's administrative
functions is by noticing how many of such features are turned on by default.
If the software loads with all of its functions available, it will take some
doing to lock it down. Likewise, it should be installed on a box with a locked
down operating system. Furthermore, companies that use access control security
products from vendors such as Netegrity, Securant and Oblix had better make
sure the portal software can connect to them.
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Features and flexibility
The role of standards
They couldn't be more critical; too bad they
aren't more widely supported.
Standards remain a huge issue for enterprise
portals. XML and its Web services derivatives Universal
Description, Discovery and Integration, and Simple
Object Access Protocol are the critical emerging standards.
(See “Web services:
Where middleware and XML converge”). These
protocols will ensure the portal can incorporate new
technologies as they become available, says Gary Hein,
an analyst with The Burton Group.
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A good portal is to a user what the steering wheel
is to a car. "It's where knowledge workers are going to interface
with the systems they need to do their jobs," says Trina
Seinfeld, product manager for Microsoft's SharePoint portal server.
"It really is the new desktop."
A search mechanism is the cornerstone of a good portal, but
the software must go far beyond that. It must offer advanced search capabilities
that transparently pull information from multiple sources based on a user's
needs and access rights. It must be customizable for the user's industry
and it should also support various forms of collaboration, such as community
rooms, real-time videoconferencing and audioconferencing, and e-mail.
"The portal is evolving from a place just to present information,
to a place where you can do work and search for information, collaborate with
systems and collaborate with other people," says Larry Hawes, an analyst
with the Delphi Group. "Portals are no longer just static information dumps."
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Still, the old maxim that no one can do it all holds true
here. For vendors to perform well in this long and diverse task list they
typically have to partner for technology. Epicentric, for instance, whose
Java-based portal was built for integration, earlier this year announced a
strategic alliance with digital content provider NewsEdge to gain knowledge
management functions. The code from NewsEdge is embedded into Epicentric's
portal server, and categorizes content to build dynamic, personalized pages
for users (see "Epicentric's
portal targets 'intelligent' Web services"). So when users check
their online calendars for client meetings, the portal would present relevant
information about those clients from external Web services (such as news articles,
market reports and stock prices) and internally stored data such as sales
records or meeting notes).
Other vendors prefer to buy their technology, which is why
the industry is consolidating. SAP acquired portal developer TopTier Software
this year because it realized its mySAP portal needed to better integrate
with more applications. Similarly, Citrix acquired Sequoia Software and its
XML-based portal technology so that its Nfuse Portal could connect with Web-based
applications and systems.
To help you determine which vendors will stick around, determine
which function the vendor's software was originally built to perform and
whether the vendor has a market-leading position in that area. Those that
do are likely to remain or be bought and supported. Generally, a portal vendor
will fall into two groups: those that have their roots in knowledge management,
such as Hummingbird, DataChannel and Microsoft's SharePoint portal server;
and those that have focused on application integration, such as Plumtree,
Epicentric and Viador.
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Getting personal
Putting a portal to use
J.P. Morgan American Century says it's saving millions with its Jasmineii portal.
Ask Bruce Focht, data mining analyst at 401(k) financial firm J.P. Morgan American Century, what an enterprise portal is and he'll say it's the replacement for thousands of pages of greenbar paper that saves the company at least $2 million annually.
The portal, launched in the third quarter last year, gives users reports from company's legacy tracking systems on items such as 401(k) participation numbers, plan trends and asset allocation. It also serves up news feeds and other public information.
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Ultimately, the portal should take personalization to a whole
new level as well. The portal should be able to dynamically change to support
a user's role and business process "so the portal becomes state aware
and you get access to the right applications as you move through the process,"
says Brian McDonough, an analyst with market research firm IDC. For example,
if a user were accessing laptop pricing information, the portal would detect
that the user was looking to buy a laptop and automatically offer data and
applications to aid the task.
That's Epicentric's goal with NewsEdge. InfoImage is also
steering toward such personalization. It is using Semio's concept-analysis
search engine technology to collect metadata from applications and data resources
within the portal. The metadata, such as customer and product names, are compiled
into a list of categories presented on the page. By clicking on a category,
the portal refreshes to present only data relevant to that category.
Another thing to think about is scalability. A clue that the
portal will scale well is if it can be distributed across multiple servers,
with "the portal front end on one server, the directory access component
on another server, the integration for your [enterprise resource planning]
or [customer relationship management] on yet another server," Hein says.
Such an architecture ensures the portal and network will perform
well as the portal grows in popularity among employees, or is extended out
to partners and customers.
By choosing a portal with the right architecture, features,
standards and security, you'll be on the road to a smoother network with
an easy-to-drive front end.
Related links:
Other Signature
Series editions
Race for Portal Pre-eminence, IDC's e-business trends newsletter,
June 28, 2001:
Business Portals: Applications and Architecture, from the
Delphi Group:
Building a strong portal foundation, The Burton Group:
PeopleSoft
adds collaboration to service automation app InfoWorld, 06/13/01
Information
security will be key Computerworld, 09/14/01
Plumtree
adds single sign-on to latest portal software Network World Fusion,
09/10/01
Do-it-yourselfers
rethink Web hosting Network World, 09/10/01
