Abstract
Internet portals may be seen as Web sites which provide the gateway to corporate information from a single point of access. Leveraging knowledge—both internal and external—is the key to using a portal as a centralized database of best practices that can be applied across all departments and all lines of business within an organisation (Zimmerman, 2003). The potential of the Web portal market and its technology has inspired the mutation of search engines (for example, Yahoo®) and the establishment of new vendors in that area (for example, Hummingbird® and Brio Technology®). A portal is simply a single, distilled view of information from various sources. Portal technologies integrate information, content, and enterprise applications. However, the term portal has been applied to systems that differ widely in capabilities and complexity (Smith, 2004). A portal aims to establish a community
Key Terms in this Chapter
Extranet: A private Internet that connects multiple organisations.
Web-based technologies: Technologies which are core to the functioning of the World Wide Web.
Intranet: A private Internet for an organisation.
World Wide Web: The universe of network-accessible information, supported by a body of software, and a set of protocols and conventions (http://www. w3.org/WWW).
Portal: Provides access to and interaction with relevant information assets (information/content, applications and business processes), knowledge assets, and human assets, by select target audiences, delivered in a highly personalised manner.
Executive Information System: A computerised system that provides executives with easy access to internal and external information that is relevant to their critical success factors.
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP): A collection of standards for accessing online information and applications from wireless devices such as mobile phones, two-way radios, pagers, and personal digital assistants.