In addition, the information gets out of date very quickly, and it's too hard for people to add value to the content on the intranet,' he says. Another problem is that most users are not accustomed to spending much office time working within browser software, tending to see it as just another application on their desktop. Currently, many corporate portals are the result of in-house development projects. The market leaders in the corporate portal industry include a bewildering variety of firms, ranging from enterprise software veterans to specialists, many of which offer a template-based approach for linking disparate resources. The quality and robustness of integration is key to the effectiveness of portals.
Difficulties can arise when integrating key data into the portal infrastructure.
Data can be imported from a variety of sources. Some may come from within the company, some may be specific to individual users and some may be external. The cost of implementing a corporate portal depends on the size and complexity of the solution required. However, Webridge says that the time and expense would be less if corporates did not develop their code in-house. It says that using building blocks based on Windows NT architecture can halve costs and development time.