B2B Integration : A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce

70 B2B Integration — A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-commerce
Company
Portals
Portal
Server
E-procurement
Customer
Relationship
Management
Business Partner Web Customer
u
Presentation Layer
Employee
Investor
Sei vices Lay ei (Personalization, Collaboration,
Integration* Seaich, Indejdng, Secui ity, Publish/Subset ibe)
Connection Layer
\ X
i i
Internal and
External Trading Partner Applications and , ^ , Applioat[an:! and DotaSourca
external Data Sources ^
Resources
Figure 3.19. — Portal framework
Note: B2B exchanges are covered in great detail in the chapter on B2B
e-marketplaces and collaborative networks.
3.3.2. Components of a portal server platform
An enterprise portal server framework provides open services and
interfaces that are used together with a development kit to customize
the features of the presentation layer, services offered and connections
to enterprise applications (see Figure 3.19). A portal server should be
able to fully leverage an enterprise's existing infrastructure such as
application servers, databases, legacy applications (mainframes) and
packaged applications (ERP, CRM) through the use of pre-built
components.
A portal server consists of some essential components that form the
presentation layer, services layer and integration layer. Dividing the
portal server framework into structured layered components for