Intelligent Business Portals

Abstract

Business Portals are now widely used in e-commerce. Intuitively Portals can be regarded as an information gateway for exchanging business information over the Internet. The process of business information exchange requires the services of security and access control, interoperability over a variety of software of platforms and systems, interconnectivity for communications among different data communication networks, and scalability for information being sharable on different hardware devices. So, portals can also be regarded as an information carrier for delivering the right information to the right user, at the right time, to the right place, to make the right decisions. A portal is a packaged piece of information with the properties of self-servicing, personalization, and real-time delivery. From a business point of view, a portal is a mobile, self-explanatory, and just-in-time delivered piece of information. In e-commerce, business information is a set of time-stamped transactions that can be triggered by events in business activities. This article will illustrate and explain the architecture of intelligent business portals for Web-enabled business applications.