Last summer I discussed how the evolution of consumer portals like Yahoo! was expanding the industry's understanding of what a corporate Web site might entail (see PBDJ, Vol. 6, issue 8). In fact, the ultimate result of moving a business to the Web seemed to naturally create an "enterprise portal" for the business. I also told you to be on the lookout for important announcements from Sybase regarding this trend. Here's the follow-up...

As you know, by last year the whole idea of a portal emerged when the search engine or default home page of your ISP or browser provider evolved into a customizable site that offered various services to the user. Portals let you set them up so that you can see stock quotes, the weather forecast, news and other information pertinent to your interests and needs. They act as your personal gateway to the Web.

An enterprise portal takes a giant step beyond these consumer portals: it becomes the gateway to all functions for an entire enterprise - for its customers, partners, suppliers and employees. Or, as I put it, it becomes the face of the enterprise.

Enterprise portals usually emerge from existing corporate Web sites. Typically these sites start by publishing static corporate information, then publish dynamic content and finally transition to include simple e-business applications such as order entry. As more applications migrate to the corporate Web site, more and more of the enterprise's processes - for partners, suppliers and employees as well as customers - become available at the site, at which point it is well on the way to being an enterprise portal. Add other features such as content management, integration services, globalization services, scalability and so on and the transformation is complete.

Given the natural fit between this important evolution and Sybase's own capabilities, Sybase moved quickly to deliver the right combination of technologies to make it faster and easier for your organization to move toward implementing an enterprise portal. On February 14th, 2000, at the Sybase Open Tennis Tournament in San Jose, California, we announced Sybase Enterprise Portal. (For information about the tournament and the product announcement, check out www.sybaseopen.com, a site developed and powered entirely by Sybase Enterprise Portal.)

Sybase Enterprise
Portal combines core portal components like content management, personalization, content retrieval and an array of integration options for data, events and applications with complete systems management, an all-encompassing security framework and a metadata repository. The result is a secure environment with the necessary features to ensure two critical portal capabilities: the portal's continuous availability for all users and its scalability no matter how heavy the traffic.

Add Sybase's recently announced e-Portal Alliance program, which offers customers access to key technologies for specific e-business communities through special e-portal alliance partners, and you can see that Sybase Enterprise Portal provides a solid, comprehensive path to transforming a corporate Web site into an enterprise portal.

While we believe the announcement of Sybase Enterprise Portal is important news, the news gets even better for EAServer developers. At the core of Sybase Enterprise Portal is technology you're all familiar with, namely EAServer. This means you can use all of EAServer's features and functionality in your portal strategy. For example, you can easily integrate all of your existing PowerBuilder, J2EE and C++ applications, logic and components as an integral part of your enterprise portal. EAServer's application integration technology enables office ERP and legacy applications to be redeployed, not rewritten. And of course you can use the tools you're familiar with and all of your knowledge and expertise in developing your enterprise portal. Finally, and just as importantly, any stand-alone e-business applications you're building today on EAServer will seamlessly integrate into an enterprise portal whether the portal is implemented now or in the future. In other words, we're maintaining our commitment to developing and supporting the best technologies for Internet applications development and deployment, while acknowledging the need to protect an enterprise's existing investments.

As an EAServer developer, whether you use PowerBuilder or Java to develop your components, you can depend on EAServer to put your business up on the Web from the first application to the entire enterprise. It's efficient, cost-effective and easy, whether you're building and deploying new Internet applications or leveraging existing applications and data. And as your organization develops its portal, EAServer ensures that you can make the transition smoothly using Sybase Enterprise Portal.