Portal: transition to a single point of access

Most organisations today are poorly positioned to take advantage of the recent proliferation of rich internal corporate information sources resulting from the rapid development of intranets, enterprise applications, and electronic business. The problems arise from two fundamental aspects underlying the current computing environment. First, the explosion in the quantity of key business information now captured (imprisoned) in electronic documents has left many organisations literally losing their grip on information as they transition into new systems and process upgrades. Second, the speed with which the quantity and kinds of content is growing means that what is required to meet these challenges is a rigorous internal discipline to expose and integrate the sources of enterprise knowledge.

The crux of the problem that has arisen with the proliferation of knowledge sources lies in the sense that disparate corporate information is difficult to reconcile and organise across an enterprise. The most compelling promise of the corporate portal is that it offers an unique integration capacity which takes advantage of the inherent purpose and structure in corporate information. The portal crafted around these naturally occurring centres of action and interest can almost automatically yield a degree of relevancy that is non-existent in broad-based Internet data sources.

Source: "Enterprise Portal Shape Emerging Business Desktop", Delphi Group, January 1999.