Forces like shrinking margins, a continuously evolving competitive situation and mega-retailers looming in the background have made dinosaurs of the sluggish mainframe, client-server and proprietary legacy environments retailers have been accustomed to rely on for delivery of the near real-time information they need to survive and thrive. In addition, in the face of markets expanding globally, retailers need to provide 24x7 service to their increasingly sophisticated and Web-savvy customers.

A promising answer to this pressing need is the business portal, which can deliver numerous services to retail users: improved communications, secure e-business transactions, even e-learning programs. The business portal can become the interface between users and Web-centric services, guaranteeing the confidentiality and incorruptibility of data, delivering improved efficiencies to the retail supply chain, as well as reduced operating costs even for growing concerns.

Yet another useful aspect of using business portals involves the use of existing information such as data, applications, reports and transactors (DART) that can create and deliver new online services in short order. The DART model focuses on the particular community to which a service is targeted, aggregating and presenting information assets through the business portal.

Creating a business portal begins with the retailer's use of the directory server to define the profiles, permissions and policies that manage users. The Sun JavaTM System Portal Server (formerly SunTM ONE Portal Server) was designed to deliver these benefits to businesses of all types, offering an open and secure portal framework for delivering information and services to multiple channels and audiences.

The Sun Java System Portal Server supports multiple application servers -- such as BEA WebLogic, IBM and the SunTM ONE Web Server, for applications that do not require all the functionality of an application server but that can support millions of users -- employees, partners, suppliers and customers -- a typical level of demand for major retailers.

Because there is no client-side software to install and maintain with the Sun Java System Portal Server, the portal can be securely accessed from behind corporate firewalls, Internet kiosks, or corporate desktops and mobile laptops. The solution includes as well support for multiple authentication types, single sign-on, access control, policy enforcement and SSL support, all of which reduces the complexity of user administration by maintaining a unified identity profile.

A further benefit of the business portal is the use to which the National Retail Federation (NRF) has put it in founding NRF University, an online learning solution that integrates courseware and content to provide a reliable communication medium with consistent baseline retail training. NRF University makes a wide curriculum of training courses available on the Web. Retailers in any location can use this system to consistently train employees wherever they are.

This article was based on a presentation and the insights of Manish Punjabi, Group Manager, NICP Vertical and OEM Marketing, Sun Microsystems. The complete original article is at the URL below:

http://www.sun.com/br/retail_512/article_industryupdate.html

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