The Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel
666 Anton Boulevard, Costa Mesa

The Four Seasons Hotel
411 University Street, Seattle

The River Place Hotel
1510 SW Harbor Way, Portland

The Saint Francis Hotel
Union Square, San Francisco

Sponsored by: InfoImage Corporation

This Business Forum Luncheon discussed the difficulties in implementing enterprise portals for larger organizations, and the business and technical advantages of using federated portal architecture to build an enterprise portal.

The idea of enterprise portals is both simple and compelling; build a web and browser based system that allows knowledge workers in the enterprise to access all the information that they need to do their job, regardless of where that data is stored. By providing access to numerous corporate data sources through a single web interface, called the "enterprise portal", employees save time they would otherwise spend requesting reports, contacting colleagues, and waiting for answers from other departments.

Implementing this appealing idea however, is seldom easy. That is because most enterprise portals are built on :"data center" architecture that relies on centralizing data to one server. However there are now better, faster, more economical and effective ways to build enterprise portals and at this forum discussion our friends, members and supporters managed to cover everything you could think of.  If you would like further information, just scroll down and request it.

Some of the comments we received from the guests after the meeting:

"Very Enjoyable & Informative. Corporate Portal information was fascinating."
Kimberly Schauer, Project Coordinator - Internet Services
AAA Oregon/Idaho

"This one generated a lot of good discussion - Speakers are always take aback by the format"
Bob Quick, IT Director
GCSI

"Very enlightening - We are following up with the speakers."
Roger Moore, Project Manager
Boeing Rocketdyne

"Helpful and Informative"
Wolfgang Hack, Executive VP
Hill Partnership Incorporated

"Very informative; good exchange of information"
John Birk, Manager Information Services
Rancho Santiago Community College District

"The consistency of the above average meetings is excellent. Programs always timely. Good group size. Excellent site and services."
Robin Noah, VP Human Resources Department
Crest Financial Corporation