Portal directions 2003

Network World defines a portal as basically one or more glorified Web pages that aggregate information from a variety of sources and assemble it on the fly for customers, partners and employees. Ideally, information from disparate databases and applications is compiled into predesigned portlets, which are assembled into portals depending on a user’s needs.

While that’s the standard definition vendors say that this year you could see portals become more than just glorified Web Pages.  Big vendors such as IBM, Sun and BEA Systems as well as traditional portal vendors Vignette, Plumtree and Epicentric will be looking to offer more integrated packages.

In our Special Focus this week we lay out some upcoming product details and directions.  For example:

*According to the Gartner, suites of integrated software packages that contain an application server, integration software and other components will become the norm not the exception.

*Gartner also says suites of software will become more intelligent featuring content, knowledge and process management capabilities.

*Users can expect to see increased security, business process automation capabilities and better Web services support.

*Customers will find less proprietary implementations and more standards-based offerings allowing for better multivendor integration.

For more on this story see: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2003/0120specialfocus.html