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What is a "portal"? For that matter what is a "vortal"? This topic was addressed recently in an audio Webcast series broadcast over the Internet by the Corporation for Research & Education Networking (CREN). CREN calls the informative series "Tech Talk ". According to Howard Straus, the technology anchor of the program, a portal is "A gateway to web access...A hub from which users can locate all the web content they commonly need." Examples of this include Yahoo and Excite. But wait--aren't those called "search engines"? Yes, they began as search engines and that service remains intact. But, Yahoo has morphed into much more. Now you can click directly on "maps" and plan a detailed driving route or select "stock quotes" and get--Presto!--stock quotes. Items from the day's news are highlighted and there are Internet shopping opportunities available at the front page. A user can personalize the Yahoo page by creating "My Yahoo" page. One may choose to have several bits of information placed prominently on the My Yahoo page when it opens; sports scores for favorite teams, reports for stocks in an individual portfolio, the weather in the user's city, movie releases, a Currency converter, horoscopes and more. The selections one has to choose from are the same for every user. No person has access to more information than another. The user decides what to make available on his or her front page. Some portals are set up for special interest populations or professions, e.g., TeleEducation, a portal for large-scale distance education.
Why have portals at all?
Portals exist to help users select information that is "mission critical". Take a look at any large web site--more than several hundred pages. Can an individual user quickly find information the web designer has placed on the web for him or her? If the only person who can locate all the information on a site is the site's designer, the site is ready to become a portal. The flood of information continues to grow on the Internet, and the front page of many Websites can easily be described as "busy"---and this author is being charitable.
Vortals?
Portal information is all determined by the Web site owner. Portals contain information that the web page owner is guessing you need or want. This is the major difference between a portal and a vortal. A "vortal" or Virtual Enterprise Portal is user-centric. The Web-owner researches what the user might want or need. A university's vortal would make the same information available to a faculty member as it would to the head of the security department. By the same token, individuals students would have different information available based on major, program and semester courses. Companies such as Blackboard create software that can accomplish this for academic organizations.
The idea of an efficient vortal also requires the organization to have significant database capabilities. The software "remembers" what pages a user can gain access to. It would be terribly inefficient to create multiple sets of web pages for each possible user. A user might have the same Human Resources policy manual as any other user. The organization's legal counsel would also probably have access to current and past case files of the company. An employee could have access to his or her earnings record, but an payroll clerk would have earnings records for several staff units. The database and ID validation is critical to the vortal concept. VerticalNet, a local company, creates targeted industry sites. These sites also provide communication and networking within an industry and will customize software to provide an e-commerce platform for a subscriber. The Vertical net diagram, below, provides an idea of the industry-specific, in-depth information and functionality a vortal could provide.
Reprinted by permission of VerticalNet, Inc. © 2000, VerticalNet, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Another company involved in the vortal marketplace is SAP. You may have seen the television advertisements for "MySAP". Medscape also offers specialty pages to physicians, medical students, pharmacists, nurses and medical office managers. Some information sources are reserved specifically for each profession. Many sources are also available in common.
The Future
None of the products mentioned are ultimately customizable for every facet of an organization's business. To create a universal Vortal for your organization, it will require software with content able to provide entrance to a custodial staff member as well as an individual student, a Dean or a patient seeking information. We don't know when someone will develop this capability, but it's going to happen. Probably sooner rather than later.
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