Usually application programs are called Enterprise Portals. Programs like this, coordinate the searching and presenting of informations and offer different possibilities to it’s users. A few of the possible functions are user administration, navigation, personell management and security.

A portal is a program or application giving its users the possibility of a central access and personalized Content. The most portals put their center of attention on the aspect of integration.

Most times a standard portal software is called enterprise portal. Those standard portal software offers the following options:

business process management, enterprise content management, content management, single sign on, document management, personalizing, searching functions, integrators and front-end creation.

Advantages and disadvantages of portal solutions:
Advanteges
-integration of applications
-timeliness of data
-single sign on
-common data base
-combination of information via application limits
-single process platform
-single user interface
-low training costs

Disadvantages
-transferring difficulties of existing applications
-problems with the implementation of processes across the application limits
-often 1 common programming language (if another application with a different programming language should be integrated, it can cause problems)