Building Portals, Intranets, and Corporate Web Sites Using Microsoft Servers

Portal Definitions

Although the desire for portals seems nearly universal, the meaning of the term “portal” is not universally agreed upon. It means different things to different people, and it has been seized on as a marketing mantra by software vendors to mean exactly what they happen to be selling. For instance, SharePoint Portal Server is the only current Microsoft product with “portal” in its name, but document management and a search engine are arguably more prominent than the digital dashboard portal feature in this product. If you are building an outward-facing portal on the Microsoft platform, SharePoint Portal Server is probably not your first choice in the Microsoft product family, as it is geared toward use inside the enterprise. ...