IntroductionPortals offer considerable opportunities for higher education to provide better service to stakeholders, manage identity and access concerns more effectively, and leverage intellectual capital, all while increasing productivity.
Serious challenges exist, however, that may undermine the ability of some institutions to take full advantage of these opportunities.ScopeThis brief offers a definition of portals in higher education, and delineates their common functionalityexplores what is driving and inhibiting the growth of the portals marketproposes a framework for evaluating portal solutions, summarizing a sampling of portal vendors and suggesting how portals will continue to evolveHighlightsportals offer higher education a key resource to more effectively managing their kingdom.
Portals afford considerable business efficiencies and increased levels of service.
Consequently, portals will become more deeply integrated into institutions; it will cost more to stop than to continue investing in them.Each institution of higher education has its own culture and its own way of doing things.
Consequently, institutions are expected to vary in the degree to which they find different features of a portal solution compelling.
Portal vendors have positioned their products in the market, in part, by highlighting specific features.While Datamonitor is optimistic about portals, there are circumstances in which opportunities will be inhibited due to technological challenges, the absence of project champions, and the discomfort with conducting business beyond the usual 9 to 5 workday.
institutions need to address them in order to proceed successfully with portal solutions.Reasons to PurchaseThis brief defines portals and lists and defines the issues and challenges facing portal implementations in higher educationThis brief provides vendors with detailed information on the factors driving and inhibiting the investment in portals in higher education.