Enterprise portals just keep gaining momentum. Why? Because--theoretically, at least--a good portal server saves a ton of application development time.
This happens in two ways: First, third parties supply content and functionality in the form of "portlets"--pre-built browser applets that provide everything from today's weather to reports on your own corporate division's inventory levels. Second, just like people personalize My Yahoo, employees can pick and choose functionality to create tailored intranet pages that support their job responsibilities, rather than calling on IT to build custom applications.
IBM is a newcomer to enterprise portals, quietly entering the market with its WebSphere Portal product line in March of last year. It's a crowded field. Not only does every application server vendor from BEA to Oracle have its own portal server, so do the top ERP vendors. And the pure portal plays have been very busy: Epicentric, BroadVision, Plumtree, and Bowstreet have added either back-end integration or end-user personalization features within the past month and a half. By most accounts, WebSphere Portal's ease of use lags behind that of Epicentric, the market leader, and Bowstreet, the leading innovator.
But IBM's announcement of 23 new WebSphere portlet providers demonstrates once again that IBM really, really knows how to partner. Its aggressive PartnerWorld program virtually guarantees an ever-expanding supply of third-party portal functionality. More important, few can touch IBM's skill at legacy systems integration, which has turned out to be the "gotcha" in portal server deployment. Cute portlets that deliver current airline flight information are one thing, but those with robust functionality that extract relevant data from an enterprise's own mainframe systems require a different level of expertise. IBM can help with that--since its WebSphere strategy is all about enterprise integration, with its J2EE application server as the foundation.
Enterprise information portals (EIPs)--their look and feel, what portlets they include, their personalization features--now play a key role in how employees perceive the enterprise in which they work. The intriguing thing about enterprise portals is that, as business users customize, they engage in a crude form of application development. As the presentation layer for application servers, portal servers surface Java's component-based benefits of reusability and portability, while insulating end users from the pain of Java application deployment and management. Under the hood, those servers that go furthest to ease integration--and enable developers to create portlets that delve deep into internal company data--will provide the most valuable enterprise portal solutions.
Is your enterprise portal project lightening your app dev load or are you weighed down by integration requirements? E-mail Eric or Talk Back below.
