To step up to the rapidly accelerating requirements of e-business, the mission of portals has changed from little more than glorified intranets to being the deployment platform of a complex and comprehensive array of online software.
Termed third-generation portals, they provide a development and deployment platform that moves into the interactive world of e-business engagement, integrating across content, applications and processes.
According to Nancy Tubb, senior analyst of global research house, Delphi Group, the ability of dynamic, interactive platform-based portals to support effective information design and truly integrative views of information and processes will come to define the key success factors for online competition.
"Structured data systems will meld with document and unstructured components to bring a level of user-centric access and work process orientation, which has been elusive in previous generations of portals," says Tubb.
Delphi Group sees Compuware`s enterprise portal OptimalView as accepting the challenge of delivering a third generation portal. It rises to the numerous challenges of meeting the needs of enterprises by providing simplified access to information along with applications and business processes that lead to action."
OptimalView is defined as a business integration framework that provides a single point of access to information, applications and business processes: "This focus on integration across content, applications and processes defines OptimalView as a third generation portal," she says.
Commenting on this, Richard Webb, Web strategist at Compuware SA, says with organisations themselves having diverse computer systems, they need a enterprise portal provider that ensures content integration across platforms, applications, and databases.
Tubb says the ability of dynamic, interactive platform-based portals to support effective information design and truly integrative views of information and processes will come to define the key success factors for online competition.
OptimalView, launched last month in South Africa and globally yesterday, integrates static and dynamic information from different sources, applications running on different platforms and written in different languages. It offers a unified view of organisations` most important information, applications and processes, saving time and money.
"The strength of OptimalView is its combination of powerful integration and technology options with standard portal functionality that is easy-to-use, maintain and administer," says Webb.
OptimalView offers 100% Web-driven administration, allowing administrators to manage the system remotely through the Internet. "Plus, the portal`s built-in content authoring minimises the technical knowledge needed for creation, management and administration," says Webb.
In addition to the standard content types such as text, table, remote content, Rich Site Summary (RSS), Microsoft Outlook integration and remote mail, among others, new content components can be created using JavaScript, Java Server Pages, Active Server Pages, Perl or 4GL.
OptimalView, which runs on Internet Explorer 5.0 and Netscape 4.0 and higher, supports a broad range of technologies and information servers, benefiting organisations with diverse infrastructures. In addition to Windows NT and Windows 2000, OptimalView will support various types of UNIX including Solaris, HP-UX and Linux. OptimalView also supports major communication standards including COM, CORBA and Enterprise JavaBeans, plus TP monitors, BEA Tuxedo and Encina. Supported components include Java, 3GL (C, C++, COBOL and so on), CICS, SAP, IMS/DC and RDBMS stored procedures. OptimalView additionally supports every major database including Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server and DB2.
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Compuware
With fiscal 2000 revenues of more than $2.2 billion, Compuware is a world leader in the practical implementation of enterprise and e-commerce solutions. Compuware software products and professional services help 14 000 of the world`s largest corporations more efficiently maintain and enhance their most critical business applications.
Compuware products and services improve quality, lower costs and increase the speed at which systems can be developed, implemented and supported, providing an immediate and measurable return on information technology investments. Compuware employs more than 15,000 information technology professionals worldwide.
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