Portals Unlock the Knowledge that Drives Business Value

Abstract

In this chapter, Robert Duffner, director of product marketing at BEA Systems, defines the landscape and technologies for tenterprise portals. Beginning with the business drivers that led to the historical creation of the product category, the article goes on to describe the three generations of portal product evolution form simple packaged applications to robust portal platforms. Duffner describes a five-tier framework that defines the technical underpinnings of the ideal portal platform and provides a vision for how the technology will evolve over time.