EB Portals

7/31/2019 EB Portals

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Web Portals

By Rajesh Math



March 10 2

Web portal

A web portal, also known as a links page, presents information from

diverse sources in a unified way.

Apart from the standard search engine feature, web portals offer other

services such as e-mail, news, stock prices, information, databases and

entertainment.

Portals provide a way for enterprises to provide a consistent look and

feel with access control and procedures for multiple applications and

databases, which otherwise would have been different entities

altogether.

Examples of public web portals are AOL, iGoogle, MSNBC, Netvibes,and Yahoo!.



March 10 3

Types of portals

The portals can be differentiated on the basis of their content and intendedusers. They can be categorized into:

Vertical Portals (Vortals)

These are web portals which focus only on one specific industry, domainor vertical.

Vertical portals or vortals simply provide tools, information, articles,research and statistics on the specific industry or vertical.

As the web has become a standard tool for business vortals provide anideal gateway for businesses to market their products & services and togain exposure within their vertical by developing and using vortals.

Classic examples of vertical portals are cnet.com which focuses only oncomputer and related issues, mp3.com only on mp3 audio etc.

Most of the times, vertical portals offer information and servicescustomized to niche audiences about a particular area of interest.

Vertical industry portals, known as vortals, are sites that provide a gatewayto information related to a particular industry, such as, insurance,automobiles, etc.



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Types of portals

There are innumerable possibilities for establishing special verticalportals on the market. The numerous solutions can be divided into 2major groups that partially overlap:

Corporate Portals: Provide personalized access to selectedinformation of a specific company

Commerce Portals: Support business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce

Horizontal Portals

These are web portals which focus on a wide array of interests andtopics.

Horizontal portals try act as an entry point of a web surfer into the

internet, providing content on the topic of interest and guiding towardsthe right direction to fetch more related resources and information.

Classic examples of horizontal portals are yahoo.com, msn.com etcwhich provide visitors with information and on a wide area of topics.



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Types of portals

Horizontal portals target the entire Internet community.

These sites, often referred to as "megaportals", usually contain search engines

and provide the ability for user to personalize the page by offering various

channels (i.e. access to other information such as regional weather, stock quotes

or news updates).

Intranet Portals (Enterprise Portals)

These are portals developed and maintained for use by members of the intranet

or the enterprise network.

In today’s demanding business enterprise the key to productivity of the

employees depends on access to timely information and resources.

The most common implementation of enterprise portals focus on providingemployees with this information on a regularly updated manner along with

document management system, availability of applications on demand, online

training courses and web casts etc along with communication in the form of

emails, messaging, web meetings etc.



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Types of portals

A company’s public website itself is not automatically a corporate portal. Itcan become one if the Website provides personalization and navigationfunctionality, as many are beginning to do.

More advanced enterprise portal solutions provide access via mobiledevices, such as cell phones, PDA’s, handheld PC’s etc. facilitating on theroad work, decision making, and business processes.

Marketspace Portals

Marketspace portals exist to support the business-to-business and business-to-customer e-commerce.

Major functionalities:

software support for e-commerce transactions

ability to find and access rich information about the products on sale

ability to participate in discussion groups with other vendors and/orbuyers

GMI is one of the largest independent solution providers in socialnetworking website development, web application development, webportal design & Offshore software development.



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Intranet

An intranet is a private computer network that uses Internet Protocoltechnologies to securely share any part of an organization's information oroperational systems within that organization.

The term is used in contrast to internet , a network between organizations, andinstead refers to a network within an organization.

Sometimes the term refers only to the organization's internal website, but maybe a more extensive part of the organization's information technologyinfrastructure. It may host multiple private websites and constitute an importantcomponent and focal point of internal communication and collaboration.

The first intranet websites and home pages began to appear in organizations in1990-1991. Although not officially noted, the term intranet first becamecommon-place among early adopters, such as universities and technologycorporations, in 1992.



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Characteristics of Intranet

An intranet is built from the same concepts and technologies used for the Internet,such as client-server computing and the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP).

Any of the well known Internet protocols may be found in an intranet, such as HTTP(web services), SMTP (e-mail), and FTP (file transfer).

Internet technologies are often deployed to provide modern interfaces to legacyinformation systems hosting corporate data.

An intranet can be understood as a private analog of the Internet, or as a privateextension of the Internet confined to an organization.

Intranets are also contrasted with extranets. While intranets are generally restrictedto employees of the organization, extranets may also be accessed by customers,suppliers, or other approved parties.

Extranets extend a private network onto the Internet with special provisions foraccess, authorization, and authentication (AAA protocol).

Intranets may provide a gateway to the Internet by means of a network gateway witha firewall, shielding the intranet from unauthorized external access.

The gateway often also implements user authentication, encryption of messages, andoften virtual private network (VPN) connectivity for off-site employees to accesscompany information, computing resources and internal communications.



March 10 10

Uses of Intranet

Increasingly, intranets are being used to deliver tools and applications, e.g.,collaboration or sophisticated corporate directories, sales and customer relationshipmanagement tools, project management etc., to advance productivity.

Intranets are also being used as corporate culture-change platforms. For example,large numbers of employees discussing key issues in an intranet forum applicationcould lead to new ideas in management, productivity, quality, and other corporate

issues. In large intranets, website traffic is often similar to public website traffic and can be

better understood by using web metrics software to track overall activity. Usersurveys also improve intranet website effectiveness. Larger businesses allow userswithin their intranet to access public internet through firewall servers. They have theability to screen messages coming and going keeping security intact.

When part of an intranet is made accessible to customers and others outside the

business, that part becomes part of an extranet. Businesses can send privatemessages through the public network, using special encryption/decryption and othersecurity safeguards to connect one part of their intranet to another.

Intranet user-experience, editorial, and technology teams work together to producein-house sites. Most commonly, intranets are managed by the communications, HRor CIO departments of large organizations, or some combination of these.



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Benefits of Intranet

Workforce productivity: Intranets can also help users to locate and viewinformation faster and use applications relevant to their roles andresponsibilities. With the help of a web browser interface, users can access dataheld in any database the organization wants to make available, anytime and -subject to security provisions - from anywhere within the companyworkstations, increasing employees' ability to perform their jobs faster, more

accurately, and with confidence that they have the right information. It alsohelps to improve the services provided to the users.

Time: Intranets allow organizations to distribute information to employees onan as-needed basis; Employees may link to relevant information at theirconvenience, rather than being distracted indiscriminately by electronic mail.

Immediate Updates: When dealing with the public in any capacity,laws/specifications/parameters can change. With an Intranet and providing your

audience with "live" changes, they are never out of date, which can limit acompany's liability.

Supports a distributed computing architecture: The intranet can also be linked toa company’s management information system, for example a time keepingsystem.



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Extranet

An extranet is a private network that uses Internet protocols, network connectivity.

An extranet can be viewed as part of a company's intranet that is extended tousers outside the company, usually via the Internet.

Enterprise applications

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, several industries started to use the termextranet to describe central repositories of shared data made accessible via theweb only to authorized members of particular work groups. Some applicationsare offered on a Software as a Service (SaaS) basis by vendors functioning asApplication service providers (ASPs).

Specially secured extranets are used to provide virtual data room services tocompanies in several sectors (including law and accountancy).



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Extranet

Advantages

Exchange large volumes of data using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)

Share product catalogs exclusively with trade partners

Collaborate with other companies on joint development efforts

Jointly develop and use training programs with other companies

Provide or access services provided by one company to a group of othercompanies, such as an online banking application managed by onecompany on behalf of affiliated banks

Share news of common interest exclusively

Disadvantages

Extranets can be expensive to implement and maintain within an

organization (e.g., hardware, software, employee training costs), if hostedinternally rather than by an application service provider.

Security of extranets can be a concern when hosting valuable orproprietary information.

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