When looking at portal services, you should consider application development, administration and integration.

For building applications, we prefer solutions that provide templates and graphical utilities for setting up user interfaces and tying them to back-end services. Some solutions require developers to build their own page layouts and presentation logic in Java, JavaServer Pages or Active Server Pages. Others have predefined page templates that can be used as a starting point, as well as "portlets" that provide predefined logic for executing certain actions.

For administration, a good portal server should provide intuitive Web-based interfaces for configuring the portal environment. However, the more complex the portal server, the more complex the administration may become. For example, advanced tasks such as setting up taxonomies, configuring Web crawling parameters and targets, and defining rules and conditions for personalization will likely require some level of training and expertise. In terms of general administration, some portal servers provide the ability to leverage administration utilities of the OS as well as LDAP or directory services such as Microsoft's Active Directory. Ideally, the portal server will fit neatly into your IT environment without extensive implementation effort.

Finally, integration with existing business applications is a major requirement for portal servers. A portal server should provide the ability to easily integrate with disparate back-end data sources to expose this content through the portal. Many portals provide packaged connectors for tying into major database systems, content-management systems and ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems. At a minimum, a set of open APIs or object interfaces is needed to simplify integration.

For integration as well as performance and reliability, application servers and EAI (enterprise application integration) components bring a lot to a portal implementation. Portal servers that are designed to run on an application server platform, such as a J2EE (Java2 Enterprise Edition)-compliant application server, will inherit the application server's capabilities in areas such as load-balancing, fault tolerance, connection pooling, caching, and other performance and scalability features. EAI components can help simplify the integration of the portal environment with back-end systems, such as legacy or mainframe systems, if needed.

Enterprise Considerations

If you're considering an enterprise portal implementation, remember that it is indeed an enterprise solution. While portals can be deployed to address departmental needs, the real value comes from extending the solution to the entire enterprise or beyond. Any enterprise portal strategy should therefore be implemented in line with the organization's larger e-business or enterprise knowledge-management strategies.

Of course, this approach requires diligent planning. You'll need to take a detailed inventory of needs and requirements across the organization, and incorporate it into the product design and implementation plan. In addition, an enterprise portal means major changes in the way employees work, so you'll want to involve managers and users from all areas of the organization in your planning process -- not only to build a solution that meets their needs, but to gain organizational buy-in for the initiative and to establish a sense of shared ownership.

Enterprise Portal Capabilities Click here to enlarge

You'll also want to look at the portal server's architecture, and ensure that the system can coexist with your IT environment and leverage your staff's development and maintenance skills. Significant integration and customization are usually required, so you'll need experienced developers and integration professionals to build and deploy the solution. In addition, you will need to train your staff to maintain the system.

Take a hard look at your needs for scalability, performance and reporting. This requires a detailed understanding of your users' expected usage patterns, so you can configure an environment that can scale and reliably handle users' demands.

Finally, you should remember that the consumer of the portal implementation is the user. Make it as simple as possible for users to configure their interfaces the way they want, and provide users with interfaces that make system use easy. If your organization is global, you must account for globalization, localization and language support.

Of course, portal servers come at a cost -- and the pricing models vary widely from solution to solution. For example, Brio prices its product at $150,000 for 500 users. Our Editor's Choice winner, Plumtree Corporate Portal 4.0, starts at $400 per user with a 250-user minimum (see "Plumtree Grows a Peachy Portal"). Novell Portal Services is priced at $59 per user or $49,000 per server (see "The Big Three Branch Out"). Such pricing does not include maintenance or professional services fees -- nor does it include the application-development and support costs you will likely incur.

Building a convincing ROI argument for a portal deployment may be tougher than with other types of technologies. For example, a major benefit of portals will include the time employees save when looking for the information they need. Another benefit is the reuse of existing information and the corresponding reduction of re-creating work that may have already been done by others in the organization. With portals, the payoffs may seem intangible, but they are all about increased productivity, which organizations should be prepared to measure if they want to quantify the benefits.