Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book is a one-of-a-kind in that it provides equal coverage ofo the business and technical aspects of corporate portals. Further, it gives a very succinct description of what a portal is, and how portals can provide measurable benefits to a business.
With respect to what value a portal brings the author sums it up with an illustration early in the book that shows the many different types of portals, and the sub-categories of corporate portals. As a consultant who needs to be able to explain what a portal is in the clearest possible terms I found this one graphic worth the price of the book.
Let me cut to the chase: this book is valuable and has many strengths. It also has some shortcomings. I'll address its strengths first.
The first four chapters were gold mines. They start with a business problem statement, define portal types and their fit to specific business goals, and step you through building a business case for a portal. This is excellent information that is not only well written, but shows Ms. Collins as a seasoned expert who has done this many times before. Some of the final chapters were equally as valuable - in particular chapter 13 that addresses financial metrics analysis, and chapter 15, which is an example business case that nicely augments chapter 4.
Of great value are the checklists that are sprinkled throughout the book. They reflect the author's experience and will make your life simpler if you use them during the business analysis and implementation phases of a portal project.
I liked the author's treatment of knowledge management, which is one of the main business reasons to implement a portal. Ms. Collins demonstrates a deep understanding of this subject and it is one of the key strengths of the book. If you want to go deeper into knowledge management I recommend building upon the excellent foundation that Ms. Collins provides with Knowledge Management Toolkit by Amrit Tiwana.
There are a few weaknesses as well.
Ms. Collin's approach to making direct links to reports, analysis and queries is "brute force" in my opinion and misses one of the key features all portal software provides: the ability to interface with data using SQL queries to stuff an XML defined document type (in correct terms, "Document Type Definition") template and displaying the result using XSL (extended stylesheet language) for presentation. All or the major portals come with mechanisms called "portlets", "gadgets" and other catchy names depending on the vendor, that facilitate this method. XML and XSL are each mentioned once in the book and only in passing. I strongly use readers who are developing a portal solution that will draw from data sources to read Building Corporate Portals With XML by Finkelstein, Aiken and Zachman.
Another potential shortcoming, depending on your industry and objectives, is the treatment of identity management. While identity management is an extremely important consideration, the entity-relationship approach proposed in the book will not be effective in certain circumstances. Unfortunately, the author did not offer alternative methods. For example, if you are in health care your identification requirements are going to be governed by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which means that you need to consider role-based access controls (RBAC) as a key component of your identification and access strategy. Determining to whom to grant rights to what is a lot more complex than relatively simple E-R modeling. The design of an effective and provable RBAC strategy is through set theory. Energy is another industry that requires identification and access methods that are a lot more stringent that those recommended in this book because of the requirement to keep all regulated and unregulated business functions and data separate. Another key element of RBAC-schemes is directory-enabled identification and authentication that are independent of applications and services. The modeling for directory-based controls is object based and also cannot be done using the E-R approach. If you fall into any of these categories I strongly recommend augmenting this book with All About Network Directories by Kevin, Tina and Christina Kampman.
The above shortcomings do not detract from the value of this book as long as you take them into account. I think the author broke new ground when she wrote this book by tackling some important issues. First, she defines the real business value of a portal, then steps you through building a strategy for enabling business processes using portal technology. She also leads you through building a sound business case for implementing this technology using objective factors and measures. I have recommended this book to numerous colleagues and will continue to do so. It earns a solid five stars.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Corporate Portals: Revolutionizing Information Access to Increase Productivity and Drive the Bottom Line
An overview of enterprise information portals, otherwise known as "corporate portals". Corporate portals are entry points that give employees one-stop access to all of their company's information resources. This text explains the technology behind it, analyzes the benefits, and explains how to design and propose a corporate portal solution to decision-makers.
