Enterprise portal technology

About the Army Knowledge Online (AKO) portalThe AKO serves about 1.6 million users, including soldiers, civilians and support contractors for the U.S. Army. It is the focal point for knowledge communities, collaboration and e-mail. Important policy statements and news items are posted on the AKO, and many activities relating to personnel, logistics and training are accomplished through it. The AKO was deployed using Appian Portal from Appian.KMWorld recently hosted a roundtable discussion that focused on the Army Knowledge Online (AKO) portal. Led by KMWorld senior writer Judith Lamont, the roundtable included Col. Timothy A. Fong, director, U. S. Army Chief of Technology Office, Network Enterprise Technology Command/9th Army Signal Command; Jim Murphy, senior analyst, AMR Research; and Michael Beckley, co-founder and VP of product development, Appian.

With its just-announced purchase of mid-sized collaboration vendor Intraspect, Vignette pushes back into the enterprise -- and mimics several competitors -- after a couple of years of emphasizing external portals and customer-focused interaction modules. Vignette and Intraspect appear to be a decent match technically (the latter actually brings better Java credentials to Vignette), but perhaps more importantly, they target some of the same verticals, like finance and technology...Read about the acquisition

My colleague Janus Boye -- lead analyst of the Enterprise Portals Report -- will be visiting the USA twice this Spring. First, we host him Washington next week; let me know if you want to meet him. Then he is speaking and teaching about enterprise portals at the Gilbane Conference in San Francisco this April. Definitely worth attending if you're interested in portal technology.

It is generally accepted today that knowledge management is entering a new phase in its evolution. Views differ on the detailed characteristics of this phase but there is also broad agreement on many of the main themes. Going forward, the task facing the knowledge management movement is to engage at both higher and deeper levels within organizations. Developments in areas such as knowledge management and complexity theory, social network analysis, knowledge process design and organizational narrative will all play a key role in that evolution.But as part of the development, knowledge management also needs to address changes in information technology. Many writers would like to see next-generation KM move away from technology issues. The reasoning behind that view is easy to see. There have been considerable technology issues for KM specialists to digest in the last few years--content management, Web-based collaboration, advanced search capabilities and enterprise portals, to name a few

...but were afraid to ask. Well, now you can ask Enterprise Portals Report lead analyst Janus Boye in person, later this month in San Francisco, USA. Janus is teaching a half-day tutorial on portals at the Gilbane Conference on Monday, 24 April...

Such is the field of technology that software vendors always try to innovate. With a new "Emergency Portal" offering, a small US vendor called Viyaa Technologies tries to promote their capabilities after the Virginia Tech massacre. In a recent EContent article called "Is Timing Everything? Emergency Portals Seek to Fill Tragic Information Gaps," I offer my thoughts. From one of my quotes in the article: "Although one system cannot solve everything, assessing existing investments would be a good place to start." Maybe the tools to create "an emergency portal" already exist in your enterprise....

As if you didn't need an excuse to visit Monterey, CA, USA next January, check out Jared Spool's "Web App Summit." Quite surely the achilles' heel of every technology space we cover -- from Web CMS to Enterprise Search and Portals -- is poor usability. These software products are now fundamentally web applications, and as such, shouldn't there be a rich body of knowledge for making them more effective? Remember that as a customer, the burden falls to you, regrettably, to create truly usable UIs, whatever packages you deploy. Consider going to this summit to get a jump-start...

Research shows that companies that pay more attention to the external environment are more successful. Northern Light provides custom enterprise, industry, and Web search engines. We have built and installed over 200 search and content integration applications for leading organizations. All products use Northern Light's proprietary search technology with its classification engine and 17,000-node subject taxonomy.Market Intelligence PortalsNorthern Light's research professionals scour the Web, mine online business libraries for authoritative content, and monitor news sources to create a concise, easy-to-navigate website that an entire enterprise can use to track market trends, competitors, and industry developments. Search Alerts, our editorial team, and dynamic content keep the site current and engaging.

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