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I2C2 - Enterprise-wide Portal
Why Do You Need an I2C2 Enterprise Portal?
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Enterprise portals have the potential to change the way we work but only if they are adopted by end users. The visible structures of a portal provide the organization reflected in the design of pages, group of pages (sub-sites) and the portal itself. These structures are readily apparent to users. The underlying structures are core services, such as authentication, access control, metadata and policies/procedures. These structures are invisible when they work well, but when users cannot work with critical applications or access to miscategorized content, users become all too aware of these critical issues. Initiating a portal project (or rescuing one under way) is an exciting, sometimes daunting project. I2C2’s consistent success during their development and implementation is the result of a methodology based on five basic concepts:
1. Focus on Business Processes
Deploying a portal so users can check their e-mail from the web, read the latest company press release, look up flight information or monitor stock prices is not enough. Portals have demonstrably improved a number of processes, with measurable effects such as reducing time to deliver services, reducing time to resolve disputes, consolidating service delivery across channels, providing analytic services and special tools to support operations, providing a single point of access to multiple content repositories.
2. Emphasis on ease of use
The need to make portal use intuitive and convenient cannot be overstated. It translates into keeping a user-centric perspective, personalizing the services offered, following recognized design patterns, using a single sign-on service.
3. Deep integration of applications
Deep integration is one of the techniques required to develop portals from a user-centric perspective. A shallow integration is when the applications are integrated only in the sense that they are available from a single point. I2C2 has a set of readily available applications deeply integrated to portals
4. Scalability of services
When the portals are widely adopted and used to deliver essential services to their organizations, they become a central point of convergence heavily used. The need to scale is essential to avoid potential bottle-necks.
5. Well developed security model
I2C2 Enterprise Portals are secure. The data entered and accessed by portal end-users is protected. For example, the end-user is authenticated to the portal through a password-protected account and given the access set defined in his security profile. In order to achieve this level of flexibility, I2C2 uses a combination of techniques such as identity management and single sign-on services, entreprise directories, role-based access schemes, rule-based access schemes.
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