In the last two weblogs of Portal Demystified educational series (Portal Demystified - Part 1 & Portal Demystified - Part 2 ), we concentrated on some basic aspects of Portal Technology. In this weblog, we go little further and try understanding some more fundamentals aspects of Portal. Some more fundamental questions we often ask ourselves regarding Portal are given below. Lets explore them in detail: 6) What are the different types of Portals? There are different ways people classify Portals. Some of the Portal types based on the nature of the Portal are mentioned below: • Employee Portal • Consumer Portal • Operational Portal • Sales Support Portal • KM Portal • Procurement Portal • Business Portal • Self Service Portal • e-Commerce Portal etc etc... Now as you can see from the types of the Portal mentioned above, an Organization may have more than one type of Portals based on the functionality or the end user community. To put a structure in place, Organization may even classify Portal as Horizontal and Vertical Portal. For example, an Organization may have once common Portal, which can act as single entry point for other Portals, which are again classified, based on the functionality or the user community they server. The former Portal is known as Horizontal Portal and the latter one as Vertical Portal. The diagram given below depicts that 
7) What are the functional aspects of Portals? There are many functional aspects of Portal. Some of the important ones are: 
10) What are Portal common concerns and issues? Some of common concerns and issues around Portal Solution are: 1) Usability • No compelling functionality • Cumbersome navigation – poorly designed UI and Information Architecture • Too many portal silos/applications – user has to go into multiple applications/portals to complete a transaction/inquiry • Difficult to locate information • Stale content, outdated functionality 2) Technology • Portal vendor is going/gone out of business or vendor strategy not in sync with firm’s needs • Surfacing performance/availability issues as usage of portal grows • Lack of extensibility with current technology –New functionality –New channels • Many different technologies in use within organization 3) Business Process Improvement • Upkeep/maintenance of portals getting increasingly difficult/costly • Lack of concept of one single global firm/community • Existing portal functionality not meeting business needs to support transactions and business processes/workflows • Lack of consistent data on a real-time basis across different channels/portals (customer website, intranet, call center, branch/stores/sales force) 11) Do you need SAP R/3 knowledge to implement a SAP Portal? To some extent this is a controversial questions because many people having SAP Basis background claim that Basis knowledge is a pre-requisite for implementing SAP Portal. But based on my experience, I can say that it’s not actually needed. You definitely need a team of experts comprising of Portal Experts (to take care of Portal aspects) & SAP Basis experts (to take care of Backend SAP Applications) for a Portal implementation project. This is just my view, however this can be debated. 12) What are the right skills sets to join a Portal project? Again a difficult question to answer, normally people having J2EE experience and Hands-On Portal Implementation experience on any Portal Platform should be good combination. However this does not mean that others cannot learn about Portals. If you have J2EE background, I guess you will have little edge over others in learning this technology. Again this can be challenged by others based on their understanding. 13) What are the other players in Portal market space? There are many players competing against each other in this market space. Some of the leading players include 1) BEA 2) IBM 3) SAP 4) Oracle 5) SUN etc etc… Now, with so many Portal Vendors around, what is the Portal Selection Criteria? How to Chose which one is best for your solution? In my next weblog, we will see Portal Selection Criteria in detail. Keep watching… Related Weblogs... Portal Demystified - Part 1 Portal Demystified - Part 2 piyush.kumar7/blog/2006/05/19/portal-demystified-150-part-4-portal-selection-criteria
7) What are the functional aspects of Portals? There are many functional aspects of Portal. Some of the important ones are: - A Portal aggregates content and integrates service
- Typical services provided by a portal - Collaborative Service - Content Management Service - Self Service
- A Portal can be personalized and customized – We already understand the difference between two now.
- A Portal is accessible using Multi Devices
10) What are Portal common concerns and issues? Some of common concerns and issues around Portal Solution are: 1) Usability • No compelling functionality • Cumbersome navigation – poorly designed UI and Information Architecture • Too many portal silos/applications – user has to go into multiple applications/portals to complete a transaction/inquiry • Difficult to locate information • Stale content, outdated functionality 2) Technology • Portal vendor is going/gone out of business or vendor strategy not in sync with firm’s needs • Surfacing performance/availability issues as usage of portal grows • Lack of extensibility with current technology –New functionality –New channels • Many different technologies in use within organization 3) Business Process Improvement • Upkeep/maintenance of portals getting increasingly difficult/costly • Lack of concept of one single global firm/community • Existing portal functionality not meeting business needs to support transactions and business processes/workflows • Lack of consistent data on a real-time basis across different channels/portals (customer website, intranet, call center, branch/stores/sales force) 11) Do you need SAP R/3 knowledge to implement a SAP Portal? To some extent this is a controversial questions because many people having SAP Basis background claim that Basis knowledge is a pre-requisite for implementing SAP Portal. But based on my experience, I can say that it’s not actually needed. You definitely need a team of experts comprising of Portal Experts (to take care of Portal aspects) & SAP Basis experts (to take care of Backend SAP Applications) for a Portal implementation project. This is just my view, however this can be debated. 12) What are the right skills sets to join a Portal project? Again a difficult question to answer, normally people having J2EE experience and Hands-On Portal Implementation experience on any Portal Platform should be good combination. However this does not mean that others cannot learn about Portals. If you have J2EE background, I guess you will have little edge over others in learning this technology. Again this can be challenged by others based on their understanding. 13) What are the other players in Portal market space? There are many players competing against each other in this market space. Some of the leading players include 1) BEA 2) IBM 3) SAP 4) Oracle 5) SUN etc etc… Now, with so many Portal Vendors around, what is the Portal Selection Criteria? How to Chose which one is best for your solution? In my next weblog, we will see Portal Selection Criteria in detail. Keep watching… Related Weblogs... Portal Demystified - Part 1 Portal Demystified - Part 2 piyush.kumar7/blog/2006/05/19/portal-demystified-150-part-4-portal-selection-criteria
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