So I’ve used the analogy of a portal being like a swiss army knife first introduced by Gene Phifer from Gartner. It’s a great analogy because a portal site isn’t really about the portal. It’s about what the portal does. It’s about the pieces a portal brings together. Let me give you an example. I was recently at a client building both customer and partner portals. Here’s a list of what they were using to build their portal site:
- Portal as the main site host and provider of a variety of page, theme, integration, personalization, and other services.
- Akamai to cache content around the world
- Identity and Authentication Management system to manage Single Sign On and other needs.
- ERP System
- CRM System
- Integration layer to manage the various integration points
- Knowledge Management system that acts as the knowledgebase for all the drivers, articles, etc about my client’s products.
- Document Management System
- Analytics engine for real time charting and drill down reporting for both customers and partners
- Reporting engine for the reports that aren’t so real time
- Web Analytics tool to help my client understand what their users are doing on the site
I could go on and make a longer list but you get the point. Many, not all but many, portal based sites aren’t just about the portal. We see many other tools, systems, and technologies coming together in the portal. That’s one of the main value points of the portal. Can you imagine trying to build something from scratch to help bring all these pieces together?
Of course, once you begin to pull all these pieces together, the key is to build these integrations, portlets, and design patters to be as reusable as possible. If you get that right, you’ve got yourself a platform to build almost anything you want to build.
