Application Access in the Digital Economy
In today’s fast-paced global marketplace, the ability to provide a workforce with access to the right applications and data – whenever and wherever they are needed – is indispensable for maintaining a competitive edge.  However, the complexity and cost of delivering business-critical applications to today’s workers at the right times and in the right places have become overwhelming.  We have seen the introduction of numerous new computing devices, from powerful servers, desktops and notebooks to Java-based network computers, Windows-based terminals and handheld information appliances.  And workers are now spread around the world in branch offices, homes, hotels, and customer sites, accessing applications via network connections.

With this mass migration to the Web, corporate portals, which are already playing an important part as the source for internal information, are poised for a larger role – enhancing the traditional desktop.  Analogous to familiar Internet portals that provide a gateway to Web content, the browser-based corporate portal aggregates company applications and data, and offers management tools for organizing and using them more efficiently.

In some companies, the corporate portal has become the one-place employees and business partners can go to access a myriad of business applications, calendars, e-mail and other discrete resources.  Adoption of portals can deliver concrete business benefits: in particular, increased worker productivity and cost savings.  By providing easy access to applications, data, reports, and search tools through a central gateway, the corporate portal helps users become more efficient.  Because this access is tailored to the employee or group based on job requirements, level, position or company policy, users are not overwhelmed by irrelevant information.  In addition to raising efficiency, portal implementations can save money by replacing expensive, support-hungry desktops with a Web browser, which can run on virtually any platform.