Choosing the right horizontal portal to meet your business needs
In today’s connected world, web portals serve as a personalized point of access to relevant information, business processes and people. Enterprise portals sustain a wide variety of business activities and offer value to various audiences such as employees, customers and other stakeholders. There are two principal types of portals—Vertical and Horizontal.
Vertical portals offer access and interaction with specific applications and business functions, whereas horizontal portals integrate and aggregate information from multiple cross-enterprise applications as well as specific line-of-business tools and applications.
A horizontal portal is used as a platform for several companies within the same economic sector. It also applies to the same type of manufacturers or distributors.
Portals provide the foundation for a variety of markets and business activities and are useful to a range of different audiences. Specialized portals serve as an entry point to different firms within a specific industry as well as to suppliers. A horizontal portal offering can be used to create and manage portals for a wide range of purposes.
Changes in the horizontal portal marketplace
According to Gartner, the last five years have seen a tremendous change in the market. Today, user experience is amongst the foremost drivers for the horizontal portal market. Other drivers include the emergence of apps, personalization, analytics and automation. The coming together of multiple technologies such as social, mobile and cloud has made a personalized point of access imperative.
Identifying the right software to meet business needs
In this scenario, businesses can find it challenging to choose the right horizontal portal software due to the expanding scope and overlapping features and capabilities offered by different vendors. While considering which product to choose, businesses evaluate portal functionality and lean towards experienced vendors who have a strong background in business applications or software infrastructure.
Identifying the most appropriate horizontal portal product that suits a business’s need requires a thorough analysis of different vendors to categorize the necessary functional capabilities, strategic direction and architecture.
The horizontal portal market is changing dramatically in response to digital business needs and changing technology trends. According to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for horizontal portals, the biggest vendors dominate the marketplace today.
The leaders in this sector offer a single point of access across a range of content via one consistent interface as well as one place to engage, support, share learning and provide customer responses. In addition, they provide a flexible yet scalable way to deliver web applications as well as an environment that is conducive to collaboration.
IBM is a leader among Gartner’s list of recommended vendors for horizontal portals as detailed in its Magic Quadrant for horizontal portals.
Capabilities offered by IBM WebSphere Portal
IBM WebSphere Portal and Web Content Manager are among the foremost offerings available today in the horizontal portal market. This family of products can be personalized to allow customers a single point of access to a range of services and applications, while providing social connectivity at the same time.
It provides a common interface for all your business applications and makes it possible for the end user to access and leverage these more efficiently. Businesses can enrich their digital experience with websites that include social content, social networking, and social analytics.
They can also harness multiple benefits with its extensive integration capabilities. There are several approaches and tools to integrate WebSphere Portal with a range of applications such as custom in-house applications and Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software. WebSphere Portal also makes it possible to integrate data hosted on external servers with the portal pages. In addition, IBM WebSphere Portal helps companies benefit through greater visitor response while cutting down web operations costs.
Find out more about why WebSphere Portal is a leader in the space. Contact Royal Cyber for a complimentary consultation today.
