Impact of Portal Technologies on Executive Information Systems

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