Portals and Application Integration

Portals are nothing new. We've been building them since the Web took off and we first understood the value of externalizing existing enterprise data through Web interfaces. That was the birth of B2C e-Business, which led the way to B2B e-Business which is, after all, what POAI is all about. What is new is the reliance on POAI to support huge transactions and to support enterprises that no longer have to pick up the phone or send a fax to buy, sell, or trade. POAI removes the need for human interaction to support a business transaction. The only requirement is an interaction with a Web browser.

Unfortunately, although they are a necessity today, portals do not support the ultimate goal of application integration the exchange of business information in real time in support of business events that do not require human interaction. The goals of application integration are to design the user out of the process, thus removing the greatest source of latency in the exchange of information, and to support the new event-driven economy.