A portal represents a Web site that provides a single point of access to applications and information

Portals are becoming more and more important to companies, who have an ever-increasing need to provide employees, partners, and customers with an integrated view of applications, information, and business processes.

Portal Definition (2nd)

Portal Simply defined, is an aggregation point for content, functions, and features, using web-based technology and dynamic channels to access existing applications in order to create an interface with a unifying theme.

Types of portals

A practical way of categorizing different types of portals is to group them according to purpose or intended use. Using this type of classification scheme, some examples of different portal types include:

• Vertical market portal / vortal
• Customer portal
• Corporate portal / intranets
• Geographic-centric portal
• Subscription portal / membership portal
• Collaboration Portal
  

Why Portal

Over the last couple of years, the analyst community was relatively pessimistic about the continued viability of a stand-alone market for portal technology. Many posited that portal technology would be subsumed into something larger, be it an application server, an operating system, or a large-scale enterprise application.

At the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit, in April 2006, analysts affirmed that the portal marketplace is alive, well, and growing. They attribute the growth largely to the portal’s important role in:

• Enabling teams of people to collaborate, innovate, and learn
• Establishing practical and tangible implementations of Service-Oriented Architectures
• Driving the development and delivery of composite applications
• Introducing business process optimization and management
• Providing new and richer user experiences through applications that integrate the Web and the desktop more closely

At the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit, in April 2006, analysts affirmed that the portal marketplace is alive, well, and growing. They attribute the growth largely to the portal’s important role in:

Market growth: a healthy clip

1. Market share data and recent CIO surveys confirm that portal projects remain among the highest priorities for 2006 at large firms:
2. An enterprise portal software (EPS) report that IDC released in June 2005 states that “Worldwide EPS revenue for 2004 was $811.6 million, representing 14.1 percent annual growth over 2003. The EPS market performed better than many other software markets and is expected to continue to grow at double-digit rates.”4
3. Fifty-three percent of companies have intranet or internal portals on their IT project lists this year, according to InformationWeek Research’s Outlook 2006 survey of 300 business-technology professionals
4. In a knowledge management study by AMR Research of 100 companies, shown in Figure 2, “51 percent reported being fully operational with portal software, and 52 companies already have mandated portal framework standards. Yet, they continue to invest. The companies report a mean budget of $4.3 million, representing 21.7 percent of the total IT budget in 2005. Budgets rise to a mean of $5.1 million in 2006.”

Factors Driving Portal Adoption

Organizations are adopting portal from to desire to

• Enable teams of people to collaborate, innovate, and learn
• Establish practical and tangible implementations of Service-Oriented Architectures
• Drive the development and delivery of composite applications
• Introduce business process optimization and management
• Provide new and richer user experiences through applications that integrate the Web and the desktop more closely

One of the more compelling drivers for the adoption of portal technology is leveraging the portal infrastructure as a framework for hosting a variety of different Web applications, each serving potentially distinct audiences and supporting diverse requirements and integration challenges.

Uses of Portal include

Online Travel Portal and Web 2.0

According to a Forbes release size of online travel market is in range of $60 Billion.

The most established online travel sites are harnessing the Web’s collaborative potential to enhance their offerings.

User-generated content has changed the way content is created, shared, edited over the Internet, and, from blogs to Wikis to My Space, real-life user commentary is nipping established media and brands. Few Years ago people would talk of the death of traditional travel agents, as people around the globe clicked their way to e-tickets at online travel-agent sites, like Orbitz and Expedia. Now it is the turn of  established travel guide sites  Travelers have taken to the Web and are now providing real-time, illustrated, no-holds-barred travel guides

Collective intelligence” is what Jasper Malcolmson, director of product development for Yahoo! Travel, calls the movement. Yahoo! Shoposphere, an add-on to Yahoo! Shopping provided users a chance to make guides and lists for others, Yahoo! is mining into its 500+ million user base to create content and foster communities that will keep the Web traffic flowing.

Some of the compelling reasons companies are going for web2.0 feature enabled portals Include

• Creating a community of satisfied and connected Customer, Employee and Business partners
• Conducting business through portal, cross selling and capturing customer behavior
• Creating Portal as channel to generate new revenue and reach out to customer in other geography
• Streamlining business processes and providing common role based application role out architecture
• Providing architecture of participation and using web 2.0 services

For Instance Yahoo Inc is now competing with likes of  Expedia, Cendant, orbitz in Online Travel Market ( thanks to Web 2.0)

Blue Star Infotech offers portal services enabling travel companies to get most out of their existing travel portal. BSI portal service cover entire gamut of portal development, Integration, Portal optimization, Data migration to new portal frame work.Blue Star Infotech offers solutions which help travel companies in incorporating best features of web2.0.

Specifically BSI offers expertise in defining Travel company web strategy, mapping and optimizing complex functional processes, designing an appropriate user interface using usability engineering techniques, designing, merchandising and personalization features, integrating your back-office systems and new suppliers/providers and providing dynamic packaging – all with the objective of providing stronger and richer user experiences that convert a visitor to a booker.

• Go-to-web Strategy
• Portal Architecture/Development
• UI Design (Usability Engineering)
• Process Consulting and Reengineering
• Globalization
• XML Gateways/Direct Connectivity
• Integration with 3rd party products, suppliers and providers (connectors for various fulfillment agencies/systems)
• 24*7 Support
• Building and integrating legacy system into website/
• Building/ Supporting/ enhancing OBE
• Data cleansing for loading into portal, Data Migration, Re-building system on CMS &
• Travel 2.0 enabling services.

Blue Star Infotech’s travel technology services for portals includes Portal Development, Integration with legacy applications, GDS and suppliers, migration and production support..

The bottom line is that online travel resources are getting better and  buyer are buying more online . Travel Portal/ Sites which have started using power of web2.0 are witnessing a rapid growth in their business, as buyer now looks for feedback, review, content created by other user .

Portal with web2.0 feature can definitely go a long way in defining the customer experience, boosting employee productivity, show casing an image to external world. It’s high time travel companies start exploring benefits of Travel portal and decide on implementing web2.0 concepts in Travel Portal.

I am here to offer my expertise on

1. Outsourcing engagement
2. Offshore product development, suitable model and migration path
3. Share Industry knowledge on
   • Travel and Hospitality
   • Health care
   • Supply Chain Management
   • Offshore product development
   • Web 2.0
   • Enterprise 2.0
   • Outsourcing 2.0
   • Product development 2.0
4. Research related help
5. Partnership to cross sell each other service offering
6. Briefing about Manual and Automated testing.

So, feel free in getting in touch and networking, may be we can learn from each other

Cheers