Novell has unveiled Novell Portal Services, eBusiness technology that enables businesses to give their employees, customers and suppliers a more personalised and productive experience on the Net. Novell Portal Services uses Net services software from Novell and industry partners to give users a single login, single point of access to personalised information and services gathered from the Internet, intranets and other networks - creating a "front door" to the emerging one Net.
The deployment of enterprise portals such as Novell Portal Services is fast becoming a key strategic element to the Net infrastructure of most businesses. According to Mike West of Gartner, "By 2003, 60 percent of Fortune 500 enterprises will manage their own enterprise portals. Their key objectives are to enable effective use of personalised decision content, provide role-based access to internal business applications and workflow, and facilitate business-to-business eCommerce integration."
Novell Portal Services enables businesses to achieve these objectives by giving employees, customers and suppliers easy access to job-specific software applications, collaboration, news and other information that is customised to each user. Additionally, this information will be accessible anytime, anywhere through a Web browser, a personal digital assistant (PDA) or an Internet-enabled wireless phone.
The Novell Portal Services Software Developer Kit (SDK) -- a set of resources that allows developers to create Novell Portal Services gadgets, which display content from Web services -- is available today to members of Novell`s DeveloperNet organisation. Novell Portal Services will be generally available to customers before the end of the year.
Novell Portal Services leverages the power of Novell`s industry-leading NDS eDirectory to provide identity-based services, both within and outside of the corporation. Users get information and services related directly to them or their jobs. For example, marketing executives within a company will view a very different set of services than salespeople, just as customers will view different services than supply-chain partners. Examples of eBusiness portals include:
Employee portal
- Novell Portal Services will boost productivity by giving employees access to all the applications, services and information they need through a single view using a single password, eliminating the need to navigate back and forth between various resources or remember a list of passwords. Employees have one interface for all of their critical resources - such as collaboration, documents, streaming news and human resources applications - from any device or location, crucial in today`s increasingly mobile workforce. Novell is instituting this technology internally with the development of its employee portal, i-Login.
Customer portal
- Novell Portal Services can be used in a variety of situations to promote customer loyalty. For example, an airline wishing to promote customer loyalty can create a frequent flyer portal. Members of the program can quickly personalise their views to see information about trips to Brazil, low fares to Seattle or any flight information of interest to them. At the same time the airline can provide additional information or services to top-level members of the program, while standard members receive a more limited set of services.
Supplier portal
- To keep product inventories at optimum levels, a retailer can create a supplier portal using Novell Portal Services. By logging in to the portal, suppliers can get information about current inventory levels, submit real-time bids to replenish stock and read about upcoming promotions and marketing campaigns that apply to them.
Novell Portal Services is completely based on Internet standards and supports NetWare, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Solaris and Linux operating systems. All the applications, services and information delivered using Novell Portal Services are integrated through Extensible Markup Language (XML). This integration simplifies the creation and transformation of business processes by giving the applications and services delivered through Novell Portal Services a way to communicate with each other through XML.
Further, the addition of Novell iChain to a Novell Portal Services implementation adds increased security to a company`s eBusiness offering. While Novell Portal Services presents customised services and content to users through a Web portal, Novell iChain enables companies to deliver those services over a secure infrastructure incorporating features like multi-factor authentication, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) communications, and even fine-grained access rights to different users of the same application or service.
"Novell Portal Services is a key component in making our one Net vision a reality," said Novell e-business development manager James Thomas. "By drawing upon the identity-based information stored in NDS eDirectory, Novell Portal Services can deliver a very customised set of services that can be accessed anywhere through a Web browser. This single point of access to all the services and information people need every day -- gathered from a variety of sources spanning the Net -- is the essence of Novell`s one Net vision."
One of the first examples of Novell Portal Services in action is Novell`s own internal employee portal, i-Login, which will provide Novell employees with a single login, single point of access to customised Net services software, as well as applications like Peoplesoft, Oracle, Seibel, BayQuality, Vantive and others.
"As Novell provides technology to move customers and the market toward one Net, we are simultaneously implementing unique eBusiness initiatives internally that our customers can ultimately incorporate into their own eBusiness environments," says Thomas.
"Based on Novell Portal Services technology, i-Login gives our employees instant access to the information and services that apply directly to their jobs, whether they`re human resources applications for HR staff or sales information for the sales force. This single gathering place of job-critical information for every employee will reduce the time it takes to find and access needed applications through a simple Web browser from anywhere in the world. In other words, they can work smarter and more efficiently whether in the office, a hotel in Bangalore or the airport in Paris."
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