An enterprise portal is essentially a website that makes available to users an extensive collection of resources and services either pertinent to one domain and its sub-domains or multiple domains. The architecture of such enterprise portals is designed with an aim to facilitate collaboration between the various entities authorized to use the portal.
If the enterprise portal architecture is ineffective, it has a marked impact on the efficiency of the website. It’s important that certain features are incorporated into the architecture to ensure the success of the portal.
Note: These features have not been given in their order of importance.
- Business Information Directory
It all begins here. This directory is a storehouse of all information such as user information, workflows, and systems etc that are a part of the enterprise portal. It contains detailed information on each of these aspects including details such as user profiles, security details amongst a host of other diverse information.
- An effective Decision Processing System
One of the integral components of a decision processing system is the data warehouse. Its functions are maintained through three layers including staging, integration and access. While staging is store’s raw data that can be used by developers for analysis and support; the integration layer integrates all available data; and the access layer makes the data accessible to users. Taken together, their integration plays a very important role in web portal architecture.
- Search Engine Capability
A standard web portal offers a search engine to its users and such search engines primarily use Meta data crawlers. These crawl over the length and breadth of the data that has been imported from diverse databases including internal and external systems. This facilitates the access and processing of such information.
- Integration of Front End/Back End systems
An enterprise portal is a coming together of a front-end as well as a back end system. A successful portal architecture is one that ensures the efficient integration of the back-end systems with the front end systems. To ensure efficiency, the architecture needs to take into consideration the purpose of the portal. It can be said without any doubt whatsoever that the success of an enterprise is in large part dependent on how well the architecture integrates both these systems.
- Integrates well, within the enterprise
The architecture should be such that the enterprise portal can successfully be integrated within the enterprise itself. Many a times, the portal is the only gateway to the enterprise, which means that managers and staff are solely dependent on the information available through the portal. The identification of their needs is of paramount importance for success in the design of the web portal architecture.
Designing the perfect architecture for a web portal isn’t a cakewalk. You need to be able to think it through in its minutest detail, before you actually go about building it.
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