Web-Enabled World

The interest in POAI is driven by the widespread acceptance of the Web as a common platform for e-Business. Today, we purchase products over the Web, update our bank accounts over the Web, even find romance over the Web. Why not exchange information between trading partners over the Web as well?

The notion of POAI has gone through many generations, including single-system portals, multiple-enterprise-system portals, and now, enterprise portals (also known as digital exchanges).

Single-System Portals

Single-system portals, as you might expect, are single enterprise systems that have their user interfaces extended to the Web (see Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2. Single-system portal.

A number of approaches exist to create a portal for a single enterprise system, including application servers, page servers, and technology for translating simple screens to HTML.

Multiple-Enterprise-System Portals

Extending a single-system portal architecture to multiple enterprise systems results in a multiple-enterprise-system portal (see Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3. Multiple-enterprise-system portal.

This type of portal represents a classic application server architecture, where information is funneled from several enterprise systems such as SAP R/3, mainframes, PeopleSoft, and inventory systems through a single Web-enabled application. Users are able to extract information from these systems and update them through a single Web browser interface accessed over an extranet or over the Web.

Trading Community

When the multiple-enterprise-system portal is extended to include systems that exist within many companies, the result is an enterprise portal (see Figure 5.4).

Figure 5.4. Trading community portal.

Application servers are a good choice for enterprises, funneling information from the connected back-end enterprise systems. However, because hundreds of systems could be connected to this type of portal, it sometimes makes sense to leverage application servers within each enterprise to manage the externalization of information flowing out of the enterprise, then funnel that information through a single master application server and Web server. The result of this structure is the information found in hundreds of systems spread across an enterprise, available to anyone who uses the portal. This is an extremely attractive proposition.