Vertical Enterprise Portals by Industry

Vertical Enterprise Portals by Industry
  
This is a Letter From the Editor for the "Vertical Enterprise Portals by Industry" issue of the Internet Platforms and Web Services Spotlight.
 
  
 
  

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Desired by many, but often misunderstood or misused, portals are Web sites that allow targeted audiences to access and interact with relevant information, applications and business processes. The enterprises that provide such portal environments benefit from the knowledge management aspects of portals, as portals enable enterprises to organize their "stuff," provide navigation through the "infoflood" and deliver relevant information (and remove the clutter) via personalization. Portals represent a channel through which enterprises can communicate and collaborate with these targeted audiences of customers or business partners, and hence gain greater visibility.

In this journey to address a specific audience's needs, enterprises can benefit further from knowing what portal offerings and vendors are best suited for the industry in which they do business. This more-industry-specific approach represents a different view of portal offerings. In the past, Gartner has looked at portal products horizontally — that is, at how portals impact business across industries, regardless of the specific industry served by the portal product or service. Any vertical views that we have taken, to date, have consisted mainly of how portals stack up in terms of specific applications (e.g., customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning and training).

It's time to take an in-depth look at portals by industry — or vertically — to:

Determine what characteristics a portal must have to best serve a vertically focused enterprise's needs
Know what portal vendors, products and services can deliver on those needs
Choosing a portal product requires a lot of homework, research and expert advice. Depending on the vertical industry, sometimes a vertical solution isn't always the best solution; sometimes it's more effective to adapt horizontal offerings for vertical needs. In "A Vertical Look at Portals," AV-14-9816, Gartner examines portal offerings across a range of vertical industries, including healthcare, higher education, government, financial services and manufacturing. In doing so, we explore industry-specific portal characteristics and requirements, as well as some leading examples of portals and portal vendors in each of those vertical sectors.