Corporate Portals and eBusiness Integration

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Summary: Corporate information, distribution,and education made easy
Review: Corporate Portals provides you with a clear, practical, and detailed picture of all the technical and organizational issues involved in rating a corporate portal solution. Collins defines and clarifies the main benefits on a corproate portal and the explores each in depth: 1. Better dicision-making capabilities through access to aggragated information residing in many different systems and physical locations. 2. A consistent view of ylour organization that allows employees to easily find information through a single, user-friendly interface. 3. Sophisticated information orgainzation and search capabilities 4. Direct access to corporate knowledge and resources. 5. Direct links to reports, analyses, queries, relative data, and knowledge experts

Thank you, this is exactly what I needed to begin planning my intranet upgrade to a portal solution.

Rating:
Summary: Corporate information, distribution,and education made easy
Review: Corporate Portals provides you with a clear, practical, and detailed picture of all the technical and organizational issues involved in rating a corporate portal solution. Collins defines and clarifies the main benefits on a corproate portal and the explores each in depth: 1. Better dicision-making capabilities through access to aggragated information residing in many different systems and physical locations. 2. A consistent view of ylour organization that allows employees to easily find information through a single, user-friendly interface. 3. Sophisticated information orgainzation and search capabilities 4. Direct access to corporate knowledge and resources. 5. Direct links to reports, analyses, queries, relative data, and knowledge experts

Thank you, this is exactly what I needed to begin planning my intranet upgrade to a portal solution.

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Summary: The reality check
Review: Davydov's book is exactly what our application development organization needed to ramp up its portal strategy. This book is a voice talking beyond the "silver-bullet" hype of all kinds of Internet technologies to the bigger picture. I'a a seasoned software engineer and project manager, and this book helped me to get a firm grasp on the problem/opportunity/goal before jumping down to the details.

Rating:
Summary: The reality check
Review: Davydov's book is exactly what our application development organization needed to ramp up its portal strategy. This book is a voice talking beyond the "silver-bullet" hype of all kinds of Internet technologies to the bigger picture. I'a a seasoned software engineer and project manager, and this book helped me to get a firm grasp on the problem/opportunity/goal before jumping down to the details.

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Summary: On-the-money perspective
Review: I had an opportunity to read Davydov's book over the weekend. Highly interesting on-the-money perspective. The need for enterprises to move more QUICKLY and COLLABORATE with both customers and suppliers has never been greater. The concept of corporate portals has proven to be one of the main enabling technologies to accomodate such a need. But technology by itself is not an answer. It's necessary to align technology and business strategies to be successful here. Unfortunately, in real life, it can be very difficult to explain to non-technical managers the business rationale---as opposed to the technical rationale---for corporate portals in general and what role do they play in enterprise integration efforts in particular. Davydov's book on corporate portals aims to make this task a lot easier. The book goes well beyond introducing some basic concepts of portals and explaining related technologies. It provides useful information and advice to hopefully have gotten to its readers before they are experiencing problems so that they could be proactive with their e-business strategies. One of the best e-business oriented books I came across lately.

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Summary: Filled with Buzzwords and Acronyms
Review: I'm the architect working on a corporate portal for a sector of my company for close to a year. I thought this book would give me some insight on our situation and maybe some steps to take for the future. I found that the first couple chapters give a very good general overview of the e-business landscape. The later chapters are filled with every buzzword you've ever heard. There's An Acronym For Everything (TAAFE)! Small sample from pages 100-103: IPDM, PCSB, CRM, BPI, EAI, SOI, API, ERP, EDI, TCI, BCI, BAI. Some of which are covered in the five page list of abbreviations at the back of the book. I thought I was looking at stock quotes for a while. Overall, chapters 1, 2 & 7 were worth reading.

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Summary: One of the Best
Review: There are several excellent books which discuss essentially the same subjects. This is one of the best among them. As we all know, the WWW offers faster and better connectivity and interactivity than were previously possible. Hence the importance of portals. Hence (in turn) the importance of the scope and degree of integration which they facilitate. (Those who question the importance of integration are urged to visit Dot-Com Boot Hill and read the epitaphs.) Davydov has extensive prior experience which helps to explain the wealth of information he provides and his practical approach to it. What I find especially interesting about this book is the fact that, as Davydov explains, the strategies which so many "Fortune 100" companies (e.g. Cisco Systems, Dell Computer, GE) use effectively are also appropriate to small-to-midsize organizations. Which book to buy? There are several to select from. Consider this: You can purchase 4-5 of the books for about the same cost as one hour of an author's time if you retained that author as a consultant. Formulate what is (in effect) an RFP which includes precise specifications as to what you seek to accomplish, then compare and contrast ("apples" ONLY with "apples") the responses of the 4-5 books to those specifications. Cross-reference. Consider using a grid. Whatever. For those organizations now involved or about to become involved in e-business, portals may well be the difference between their success and failure. Your competitors also buy and read books. Put Davydov and others to work immediately.

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Summary: An opinion of Chief Enterprise Architect
Review: There's plenty of hype, and lots of information, but no common understanding - even now in December of 2002 - as to what constitutes a corporate portal, most importantly, from a technology perspective. After reading this book, I strongly feel it does shed some light. It helped me to understand that the label "portal," as broadly applied, has two levels of meanings-one specific (application oriented) and one conceptual (architecture oriented), and that focusing on the conceptual meaning is very important to get enterprise integration efforts under control. The #1 book ("MUST READ") for a serious architect!!!

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Summary: Review by a senior software architect.
Review: This book is overwritten and filled with jargon and acronyms. By acronyms, I don't mean commonly used ones like ERP, CRM, B2B, B2E, and B2C but rather ones like EEP, EMP, BIP, BCE, UIP, EAI, PCSB, A2A ODS, KRC, EII, EBSTA, VE, DW, CPF, TPRC, MTDCAA ... I could go on (and on). If you enjoy reading acronyms and hopelessly convoluted, pompous, rambling, unfocused prose, then look no further and buy this book. Otherwise, at least preview it before ordering.

The narrative is very abstract and non-specific. There are no concrete examples or business cases. The author makes many generalizations about technology and business without backing them up. Portals are not even discussed until a quarter of the way in -- before that there is a seeming endless primer on e-business. Obvious and widely accepted facts are presented and repeated many times. Everything is repeated many times.

The author suggests that this book might be suitable for a Masters-level student. I'll give him that it reads like a textbook, but that doesn't HIDE the fact there is very little information here and what is here is nearly inaccessible due to the style of writing.

I finished this book because I though that it would get better at some point. It didn't. I've read hundreds of computer-related titles about software architecture, development methodologies, programming, and technology in general, and this is in the bottom 10%.