Financial Portal Meets Social Network

Finance departments have used portal technology for a decade or more. It proved a natural for all those pesky questions from employees about compensation, from executives and managers seeking access to financial data, and from customers and suppliers about billing and payment. So here is the question: What does social networking technology bring to portals?

We’re going to find out. IBM is pushing the portal in the cloud as the combination of the classic information portal and Web 2.0 technology, something it will be unveiling in stages over the next year. Microsoft is doing the same.

Gartner confirms the trend in its most recent portal software Magic Quadrant. According to Gartner, “New [portal] entrants provide additional options for enterprises willing to consider open-source and software-as-a-service alternatives for portal functionality. To differentiate their offerings, portal vendors are incorporating support for enterprise mashups and social networking.” IBM is even working with Amazon to enable private cloud-based portals. (more…)