Enterprise portals have become one of the hottest new technologies of the Internet. Initially called intranet portals, enterprise portals go by many names, such as corporate portals, intranet portals, business portals and enterprise information portals. More powerful than internal home pages, enterprise portals will become a key component of unified application access, information management and knowledge management within enterprises and also between enterprises and their trading partners, channel partners and customers. Enterprise Portals vs. Internet Portals Enterprise portals contrast to Internet portals in the scope of users they address and their business goals. Enterprise portals address the users of a single enterprise for the sole benefit of the enterprise, while Internet portals address a wide range of users for the benefit of the portal provider and the community it addresses.
Enterprise portals have similar horizontal and vertical subclasses.
When discussing enterprise portals, it is important to place them in contrast with Internet portals. The genesis of enterprise portals was Internet portals. The ideas and concepts originated there, and Internet portals are still a leading indicator of the functionality that eventually appears in enterprise portals. Internet portals offer users a window to enterprise information, applications and processes, relevant information on the Internet, and include search capabilities, information taxonomy, content aggregation, publishing and, in most cases, personalization. That functionality will be required in the future, as the overabundance of information in enterprises must be countered with knowledge management techniques.