Authentication of a user accessing the portal can be delegated to any other external authentication service by using a COM interface. SAP Portals ships a generic mechanism for authentication implemented by a COM component. If you wish to use a different authentication mechanism, you can replace this COM component by another COM component that implements the same interface. This authenticator can authenticate against any external or internal source of users.

Authentication then works as follows. Users first provide the required authentication data, such as user ID and password. The Portal Server then forwards the logon information to the external authentication mechanism. The external mechanism checks the data and returns the authenticated user ID to the Portal Server, which uses this information to log the user on to the portal. The returned authenticated user needs to reside in the corporate LDAP directory.