Overview

The ever growing number of application scenarios for IT systems leads to a significant increase in their number and hence to a level of complexity that has grown tremendously in comparison with early IT installations by the mid of the past decade. In numerous attempts to integrate these diverging application stacks, various prominent methods have emerged in the past, most recently the topic of EAI which strives to achieve a consolidated view at diverse application systems. However, the emergence and rise of cloud-based services leads to new challenges to deal with. Usage of offerings from a no further specified cloud appears appealing for IT decision makers since it promises cost savings while even enhancing flexibility to quickly respond to changing market needs. To further support this idea, this work focuses on the aspect of inter-organisational networks that are characterised by short setup times and short time to market in order to achieve innovative products emerging from the cooperation between different actors. In this context, proper backing by dedicated ICT components is one of the key challenges. This book therefore demonstrates how portal systems, acting as intermediary between providers and consumers, can be embedded into networked enterprises by providing seamless access to all relevant information. To achieve this, this book presents a generic architecture that can serve as a blueprint for future implementations for the type of enterprise portals introduced previously and focuses on integration of external services in a user-centric manner, concentrating on the user and his specific needs to achieve productivity and user satisfaction gains. Moreover, secure communication facilities allow to consider the current application and/or user context to control exchange of information between different applications integrated on the portal platform.