What is a Federated Portal Network?

[Scott_Braker]

What is a Federated Portal Network? So then… If you have been to any of the events this year (WIS BW Portals, ASUG, SAPPHIRE etc.) you have most likely seen or heard the term “Federated Portal” or “Federated Portal Network”. At first glimpse into the Federated Portal scenario it may simply appear to the typical IT Systems Administrator that they will be responsible for more machines and a more widely spread out landscape than the one that they already have. Great! More work right? Not necessarily in this case. Actually, I believe that you will find that when you dig down into the Federated Portal Network Scenario you will realize that it is a much more logical landscape than you might have previously thought. It also will put the administration of the content producing portals back in the hands of the people that are responsible for those systems. For instance, the BI administrator will publish content that can be consumed directly from their portal instance rather than you having to copy content to your portal instance. Yet you still have access to the content that you need from a content consuming point of view. If you are a global company the biggest obstacle that you have from a portal point of view is really multiple offices, customers, data centers etc. A Federated Portal Scenario will Have to allow you to set up an “IT Infrastructure” that is spread out or dispersed over a true global geography instead of just a single data center instance or location. Some of your basic needs and/or technical prerequisites in this environment that will need to be addressed for a Federated Portal Network to be a success are things along the lines of the following:

• Secure connections throughout your worldwide portal infrastructure
• Multi language support
• User Stores and Role based architecture(s) that ensures users to access only their needed content
• Dynamic content access to repositories and applications specific to the user(s) day to day business needs

Now then, that all sounds pretty straight forward from a needs point of view. Everything else should be nice and easy to achieve correct? Well not exactly. We really need to take a look at what all this means to us on a global IT scale and as a company. Due to constant company merges and acquisitions we may have many different types of SAP Portals and non SAP portals out there in our landscape. We may have a variety of different needs from a content point of view also. This also means that the administration of the content on any variety of available portals may need to be maintained separately at each site. Therefore, we as a global company in an ever changing environment may need to maintain user roles, rights, access to and creation of content and applications. Achieving symmetry between global organizations that are potentially separated by many IT centers dispersed worldwide is the advantage of a Federated Portal Network. By integrating individual portal instances that are spread throughout your worldwide infrastructure you are essentially creating one single interactive portal network that can be customized not only from a content standpoint but also from a business centric strategic viewpoint. As I move through this blog series I will walk you through the key features of the Federated Portal Network available within the SAP NetWeaver product. Next Step: Intro to Implementation of a Federated Portal Network (FPN)