Portal Scenarios (Running an Enterprise Portal) (SAP Library

Portal Scenarios (Running an Enterprise Portal)

SAP NetWeaver implementations are supported by many predefined IT scenarios; each enabling you to attain a predefined business goal. For more information, see IT Scenarios at a Glance.

The Running an Enterprise Portal scenario allows you to provide all members of your company’s value chain—employees, customers, partners, and suppliers—with uniform, role-based, and secure access to their day-to-day work and information resources through a Web-based portal interface. These resources include SAP applications, third-party applications, databases, data warehouses, desktop documents, Web content, and services. The portal makes it possible to search internal and external sources, and to access both structured and unstructured information from any geographical location throughout the organization.

Each IT scenario consists of multiple IT processes, which comprises a set of logically related tasks that can be performed to achieve a defined business result. IT processes are grouped into scenario variants, which define a sequence of IT processes that describe a particular end-to-end process flow.

The Running an Enterprise Portal scenario includes the following scenario variants:

Scenario Variant	Description
Providing Uniform Content Access	Lets your organization develop, configure, and operate a knowledge-based, Web-like user interface that provides users with a consistent environment and single point of access to content they need to perform their daily tasks. For example, your organization can integrate both SAP and non-SAP applications into the enterprise portal using a single, consistent front end. For more information, see Providing Uniform Content Access.
Implementing a Federated Portal Network	Lets your organization develop, configure, and operate a network of enterprise portals. The federated portal approach makes it possible for your organization to share content among portals. The portal network can comprise NetWeaver portals and WSRP-compliant portals from other vendors. For detailed implementation documentation of this variant, see Implementing a Federated Portal Network.
Implementing an External-Facing Portal	Lets organizations use the SAP NetWeaver Portal to expose applications, services and information over the Internet to customers, partners and employees. The SAP NetWeaver portal provides tools and guidelines for implementing an external-facing portal for a variety of business scenarios for both anonymous and registered users. Organizations can create public Web portals that perform well in low-bandwidth networks and offer a familiar Web experience for anonymous users, as well as create Web portals that provide business partners, employees, and other registered users with a Web portal that fully supports SAP application functionality (business applications, KM, etc.). By implementing an external-facing portal, companies can boost their portal project ROI by using the same platform for the company's Internet and intranet implementations. For detailed implementation documentation of this variant, see Implementing an External-Facing Portal.