How diverse initiatives will come together

United they stand
If companies are already creating interfaces into their systems that allow the systems to talk to each other, (EAI) then shouldn’t the portal be able to leverage those investments? And if companies have invested in combining data from these systems into analysis cubes, then doesn’t it make sense to allow portals to use this data as the basis for their reporting functions? Of course it does. But the Devil’s in the details. Unless the EAI product (or products) exposes their interfaces in a way that a portal product can consume them, then the work will have to be duplicated. And the BI initiative will have to produce a data warehouse that has not only the data needed by the portal but some "intelligence" about who can consume that data and under what circumstances.

This is one of the areas where Web services will make a big impact over the next 18 months. Every major EAI vendor built its packages on proprietary mechanisms in order to get to market faster. But as Web services begin moving from drafts to approved standards, these same EAI vendors are recognising that unless they support Web services interfaces to the processes they control, then companies will either "roll their own" or move to other products that do support them. And the BI vendors are starting to recognise that their reporting tools have to support Web services interfaces, and their data stores have to be able to deliver data via a Web services call. As standard interfaces to common business processes (EAI) and the data they produce (BI) emerge, then the Portal becomes the unification point through which the information is distributed to the entity (Employee, Vendor, or Customer) that can make the timeliest use of it. So now the race is on to see which vendor can offer the most compelling combination of technologies to deliver this unified solution.