Enterprise Information Portals and Knowledge Management

Book excerpt: Is the Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) knowledge management's killer app? Leading expert Joseph M. Firestone, the first author to formulate the idea of the Enterprise Knowledge Portal, breaks new ground and looks to the future with a practical, but comprehensive approach to enterprise portals and their relationship to knowledge management. Providing a clear and novel overview, Firestone tackles a wide range of topics ranging from functional EIP applications, estimating costs and benefits of EIPs, variations in EIP technical architecture, the role of intelligent agents, the nature of knowledge management, portal product/solution segmentation, portal product case studies, to the future of the EIP space. 'Enterprise Information Portals and Knowledge Management' is the book on portals you've been waiting for. It is the only book that thoroughly considers, explores, and analyzes: * The EIP orientation, outlook and evolution * A new methodology for estimating EIP benefits and costs * EIP and Enterprise Knowledge Portals (EKP) architecture * The approaching role of software agents in EIPs and EKPs * The current and future contribution of EIP and EKP solutions to Knowledge Management * The role of XML in portal architecture * A comprehensive, multi-dimensional, and forward-looking segmentation of EIP products accompanied by portal product case studies * Where EIP sector companies are headed and the pathways they will follow to get there