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Portal mania The recent boom and interest in (and hype about) portals has made the word as much part of our dictionary as the word link or dot com. Portals grew out of what were initially known as search engines. A portal is a site that is meant to be your all-in-one entry onto the internet. Portals are often the first page your web browser loads when you start up your web browser. Portals are a breed of customized web sites that delivers tailored information each day when you log on. The term Portal is generally synonymous with gateway, for a World Wide Web site that is or proposes to be a major starting site for users when they get connected to the Web or that users tend to visit as an anchor site. There are general portals and specialized or niche portals/vortals. Some major general portals include Yahoo, Excite, Netscape, Lycos, CNET, Microsoft Network, and America Online's AOL.com. Examples of niche portals include Garden.com (for gardeners), Fool.com (for investors), and SearchNT.com (for Windows NT administrators). The term "web portal" began to be used to describe mega-sites such as Yahoo, Excite, MSN, Netscape Netcenter and AOL because many users used them as a "starting point" or "entry point" for their web surfing. The term "search engine" had become inadequate to describe the breadth of the offerings of these leading Internet destinations, although search and navigation are still pivotal to most people's online experience. What features do consumer web portals have? Portals offer a wide range of customization options and functionality including: Internet search and navigation; email; customized news, weather, sports, and horoscopes; planners, calendars, and contact managers; bookmark managers to save favorite web sites; real-time chat; message boards; original content on every imaginable topic; shopping; free home pages; "clubs" which function as makeshift intranets; small business services; and much more. Increasingly, major portals are seeing to it that vital content such as news, stock prices, and messages can be accessed with wireless devices and phones. What is a Vertical Portal - A Vortal? Vertical or niche portals are what we might have called web sites in the past. Today, however, certain category-leading web sites in a given topical category, or catering to a given demographic, are such significant players that many call them portals. The list of very popular and economically significant vertical portals is growing rapidly. Examples include ivillage.com (aimed at women); guru.com (for independent professionals); and Boatscape.com (for boat enthusiasts, of course!). Demographically-focused portals (and these are now big business, with portals being launched to cater to specific ethnic groups, specific age groups, alternative lifestyles, religions, and other groups which are perceived to form a community or market) are now being called affinity portals by some analysts. The terminology isn't set in stone, but what is clear is that "vertical" content, community, and commerce seem to enjoy increasing favor in the marketplace. What are Enterprise Resource Portals (ERP's)? Corporate Portals? Much of the buzz in 2000 is about Enterprise Resource Portals (ERP's), Enterprise Information Portals (EIP), or simply Corporate Portals. We've also heard terms like knowledge management portals, or IT portals, being used. This, we dare say, is the evolution of the intranet (and also what was once called the "extranet"?). If many corporations are like small nations, it does help to have all employees on the same page, and able to access a vast range of functionality, knowledge, events, news, etc. depending on their access levels. Company managers and CIO's are today full of questions about the best solutions and strategies to build the latest generation ERP's for their purposes. Ironically, such products, althought without the web-based functionality, have been around for quite some time, and it's only recently that the word "portal" started being used to describe them. What are B2B Portals? B2B or industry portals are in the corporate sector, like ERP's, and are "vertical," like vertical or affinity portals. But here we see something a little bit different from either of these: places where particular industries can go for information sharing, and most importantly, the completion of transactions. This is a relatively new phenomenon but possibly the most significant one in economic terms. B2B or industry portals can act as real engines for the new economy, and are acting as a catalyst in making old economies new. Imagine suppliers of raw materials bidding to sell their products to manufacturers through an auction process. If people with similar interests or demographic features might have "affinities" and a willingness to buy consumer goods from particular advertisers, imagine how much people in the same profession will have to share, and how much commerce might be transacted through these channels. This is the promise of the B2B or industry portal. It is reshaping the world as we speak. What is a B2E Portal? B2E or Business-to-Employee portal is a corporate window into all the necessary streams of information that employees need, packaged in a familiar browser interface. A B2E portal provides in-house databases and financial information, sales information, market news, competition analysis, web access and email. Why are corporations rushing to B2E portals? ·
Employees don't have to learn different in-house training programs.
All the information shows up in a point and click browser.
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