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Planning Assumption
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What Is a Portal? Sorting Through the Confusion
RPA-122001-00035
© 2001 Giga Information GroupAll rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution in any form without the prior permission of Giga Information Group is expressly prohibited. This informationis provided on an “as is” basis and without express or implied warranties. Although this information is believed to be accurate at the time of publication, GigaInformation Group cannot and does not warrant the accuracy, completeness or suitability of this information or that the information is correct.
© 2001 Giga Information GroupCopyright and Material Usage Guidelines
 
December 21, 2001
What Is a Portal? Sorting Through the Confusion
Laura Ramos and Randy Heffner 
Giga Position
A portal project may never get off the ground if it tries to encompass too broad a definition of the term“portal.” The confusion is here to stay, at least in the short term, because the word “portal” is applied in manyvague ways and encompasses too broad a list of subjects. The prevalence and overuse of the term within theindustry make it hard to communicate to executives which improvements a portal strategy is intended toachieve and how it will achieve them. Organizations should steer away from attempting to define “portal”and toward simply understanding what type of Web site to create and how portal technology will provideflexibility for users, site administrators and site developers. Then, by keeping the design and discussion of a portal Web site focused on the site’s purpose, executives and others involved in the project will be able tounderstand more clearly what business value the portal provides.
Proof/Notes
There is no commonly understood definition for what constitutes a “portal” in the market today, yet “portal”is one of the most overused and overloaded terms in the IT industry. Giga regularly talks to IT executiveswho say no one has been able to give them a clear statement of what a portal is or why they need one.To keep portal projects on schedule and on target, don’t try to create a universal definition of portal thatencompasses every technical feature or usage scenario possible inside the organization. Focus on audienceand purpose first and then strive to come up with a definition of portal that works for the scope of the project.As the market consolidates during the next year (see IdeaByte,IT Trends 2002: Enterprise Portals, LauraRamos), the hype will die down as successful portal projects take center stage. The discussion below focusesfirst on the origination of the confusion, then answers two key questions to help sort through the confusion.
Portal Confusion
In the enterprise software market, the word portal is generally defined as a specialized Web application server that integrates application interfaces (either directly or through links) to provide a customized interface withintegrated content from disparate sources. The key difference between a portal and other Web-basedinterfaces, like a home page, is the portal allows individual users a greater degree of flexibility in customizingtheir own view of content and applications. But such vague, benefits-oriented definitions of a portal can addto the confusion, because any product that touches on these benefits can (and often does) call itself a portal.The term “portal” originated as a way of describing a specialized site that searched the Web and aggregatedcontent or services from a number of other related sites of interest. These destination sites diversified intoonline shopping (
PricingCentral.com
,
Buy.com
), information directories (
Yahoo!
) and contentsyndicators/news sites (CNN, MSNBC). The sites shared the common goal to provide access to a wide arrayof information, merchandise and online content coupled with a common look and feel, regardless of wherethe user browsed.With the success (and hype) surrounding the online portals in the late-1990s, software providers adopted theterm portal to describe a new breed of content organization and access products aimed at employee intranetsand outward-facing information sites. Employee portals began to provide both aggregated content and asingle-interface experience for corporate users similar to the experience destination portals provided to Web
 
 
What Is a Portal? Sorting Through the Confusion
♦
 
Laura Ramos and Randy Heffner 
 
Planning Assumption
 
♦
RPA-122001-00035
♦
 
www.gigaweb.com
 © 2001 Giga Information GroupPage 2 of 6
 
users.Portals progressed from data and information aggregation to include access to business applications. Theexplosive growth in transactional sites for e-commerce and customer service drove this technology trend.Thus, the term portal began to overlap with business process and enterprise application integration offerings.Increases in the targeted delivery of information for online marketing and e-commerce (dubbed“personalization”) overlapped with explicit interface customization and user profiling (also called“personalization”) in the portal space, overloading the term portal and causing additional confusion.Enterprise portal technology grew in sophistication faster than users could adopt it by supporting the abilityto customize e-business applications and content for users other than employees. Portals began to handlemultiple roles, access rights and authentication controls over resources and began to deliver custom views toaudiences like prospects (online marketing), customers (self-service) or partners (developer portals or exchanges).Today, portals support advanced features that facilitate human collaboration and application integration, andare occasionally driven by business rules, events and messaging systems. However, none of the definitionsfor “portal” has diminished in common use, and the term portal now includes online media, commerce,employee communities and browser-based interfaces for back-office applications, to name only a few. Withall of this diversity, it is no wonder that confusion reigns among decision-makers.As a synonym for “doorway” or “gateway,” the term portal should carry the connotation of a “starting point”or an “entrance” through which access to other things is possible. It should guide people to the right place onthe site based on their role or on a task so that the online instructor, for example, is never confused aboutwhich threaded discussion application to use to start a discussion on the topic of e-learning. However, theword portal was not in common use before the software craze started (for example, in everyday use, portal iscommonly confused with the word “porthole”), and by itself, it is simply too vague and ill defined a term tohold any specific, concrete meaning. Thus, industry confusion around the term portal will continue, and it isnot particularly useful to attempt to define the term itself. Instead, it is more practical to focus on theimplications behind the term and to use portal technology where and when it is needed for a specific set of Web site and end-user requirements.
Sorting Through the Confusion
The answer to “what is a portal?” is easier to understand by asking two questions: “For what range of solutions is the term ‘portal’ used?” and “What is portal
technology
(and how does it help solve my business problem)?” At its core, portal technology provides an integrated visual display of multiple informationresources together with tools to enable rapid customization, personalization and configuration of thoseresources by end users, administrators and resource providers. IT shops should consider portal technologywhen a business process requires users to have an integrated view of a diverse and dynamic body of information resources.
For what range of solutions is the term “portal” used?
“Portal” is used to refer to almost any type of Website, and, in some cases, it can describe a Web presence where portal technology is neither required nor usedin practice. Especially with executives, “portal” often refers simply to “the place on the Web where you go toget to my company” in the same way that the word “door” refers to “the place you go to get into my office.”To sort through the confusion, it is useful to think of three types of Web sites, all of which could become portal candidates with the application of technology that helps bring flexibility to specific audiences and processes when required. These three exist in combinations and in degrees, but considered separately, theyare the following:1.
Content Web sites
: Whether the individual Web pages are static (i.e., in the way that text drafted ina word processor is “preconstructed”) or dynamic (i.e., in the way that reporting software might pulldata from a database “on the fly”), the structure and presentation of content and Web site navigation
 
 
What Is a Portal? Sorting Through the Confusion
♦
 
Laura Ramos and Randy Heffner 
 
Planning Assumption
 
♦
RPA-122001-00035
♦
 
www.gigaweb.com
 © 2001 Giga Information GroupPage 3 of 6
 
are fixed at Web site construction time. A content Web site may require a user to log in, but it doesnot alter the displayed content based on the user’s identity. Search capabilities may be provided, butthey are simply used as a faster means of navigation, much like a predefined taxonomy or sitenavigation tools, like tabs or menus. Common examples include: simple news site, productinformation site.2.
Web applications
: A Web application provides an interactive set of Web pages, typically databaseoriented or transaction oriented. A Web application will commonly, though not always, includecontent such as help documents or policies, or even a full-fledged content Web site. Here again, thesite is not customized to the role or preferences of the user, acting instead as a Web-based interfaceto a server-based application. Examples include stock trading, expense reporting, order tracking anda variety of other enterprise applications.3.
 Integrated access Web sites
: The focus of an integrated access site is to bring together many contentsites and/or Web applications. Although possible to accomplish without portal technology, it is thistype of site that most benefits from portal technology. When multiple resources are involved, (1) it becomes more difficult to achieve a “one size fits all” experience for different users and (2) the body of resources tends to be more dynamic, raising the value of infrastructure that is specificallydesigned for flexible integrated access.
What is portal technology (and how does it solve my business problem)?
To begin with, be clear that portal technology can be applied to any of the three types of Web sites described above. Within the context of enabling an integrated visual display of multiple information resources, the core values of portal technologyare ease of integration, ease of configuration and a custom, personalized view. The following are the coreelements of portal technology:
•
=
 A framework for integrated visual display
: An integrated display is where one Web page bringstogether separately developed display components, each of which provides a visual representationof a specific resource. The individual components of the display are variously called portlets,gadgets, adapters, modules, winlets, iViews and several other names. Each portlet is developedaccording to specific interfaces so that a portal engine can combine several portlets on a single pageand control their display in specific ways.
•
=
 Resource-specific integration tools
: Each type of resource exposed in the portal (e.g., content,applications, collaborative tools) has its own specific technology and policy issues regarding how itis brought to and used within the portal. Portal-specific integration tools are built with the integratedaccess issues of a portal in mind, although portal products may also include integration tools thatcould be used in a more generic fashion (i.e., outside a portal implementation). For example,content is often more useful for personalization within the portal when it is organized usingtaxonomy tools, but such tools might also be used for a nonportal content Web site. Other integration tools might allow users’ portal IDs to grant them access to enterprise applications.
•
=
 Resource-specific personalization tools
: Each of the various resources also has specific issues as tohow it might be personalized. For example, a body of content might be best personalized byallowing the user to register for notification when particular content changes, whereas anapplication might be best personalized by allowing the user to specify which database records aredisplayed by default in a portlet. In either case, a portal product’s user profile capabilities and itsvisual display framework are built to capture such preferences and present them in the proper wayto each resource.
•
=
User profile repository
: Whether managed in an existing directory (Lightweight Directory AccessProtocol (LDAP) or NT Domain/Active Directory being the most common) or in a proprietary datarepository, user preferences and profiles are an integral part of any portal offering, as well as thetools to manage them. Portal user repositories must work with existing directories for authenticationand access control to make the end-user experience seamless and productive.
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