WO2002067140A1 - System and method for hosting customised web portals - Google Patents

System and method for hosting customised web portals Download PDF

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Publication number
WO2002067140A1
WO2002067140A1 PCT/EP2001/015253 EP0115253W WO02067140A1 WO 2002067140 A1 WO2002067140 A1 WO 2002067140A1 EP 0115253 W EP0115253 W EP 0115253W WO 02067140 A1 WO02067140 A1 WO 02067140A1
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WO
WIPO (PCT)
Prior art keywords
portal
content
virtual
hosting
publishing
Prior art date
Application number
PCT/EP2001/015253
Other languages
French (fr)
Inventor
Gerd Breiter
Klaus Rindtorff
Thomas Schäck
Original Assignee
International Business Machines Corporation
Ibm Deutschland Gmbh
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
Application filed by International Business Machines Corporation, Ibm Deutschland Gmbh filed Critical International Business Machines Corporation
Priority to KR10-2003-7010545A priority Critical patent/KR20030082591A/en
Publication of WO2002067140A1 publication Critical patent/WO2002067140A1/en

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Classifications

    • GPHYSICS
    • G06COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
    • G06FELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
    • G06F16/00Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
    • G06F16/90Details of database functions independent of the retrieved data types
    • G06F16/95Retrieval from the web
    • G06F16/958Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking

Definitions

  • the present invention is related to a system and method for providing portals into the Internet, especially for providing high scalable and automated portals into Internet without establishing and maintaining the entire portal IT-environment on the portal provider side.
  • the Internet is a global network of computers.
  • the World Wide Web contains computers which display graphical and textual information.
  • Computers which provide information on the World Wide Web are typically called "websites".
  • a website is defined by an Internet address which has an associated electronic page, often called a "home page.”
  • a home page is an electronic document which organizes the presentation of text, graphical images, audio and video into a desired display.
  • These websites are operated by a wide variety of entities which are typically called "content providers.”
  • the user can then access information at any address accessible over the Internet.
  • Information exchanged over the Internet is typically encoded in HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML) format.
  • HTML format is a scripting language which is used to generate the home pages for different content providers .
  • a content provider is an individual or company that places information (content) on the Internet so that it can be accessed by others .
  • Pervasive computing devices like PDAs, mobile phones may function as the delivery point of service offerings from the Internet. Another kind of access service is getting more important :
  • Portals such as Yahoo, offer logical entry points through which selected content can be accessed by user.
  • Portals are gateways to the Internet.
  • Typical portals combine information from many content provider and deliver them in a single unified view to the portal user.
  • a portal may have the same appearance to all user or a personalized appearance for each user. It provides to its users an interface that displays relevant information and application access in a user friendly format.
  • Some of the common services delivered via portals include: news, weather, traffic info, stock prices, e-mail, personal web pages, guides, shopping, community building, etc.
  • the corporate portal business value is to knock down the barriers to sharing knowledge, enabling the realization of concepts like "corporate memory” and "meetings without walls”.
  • the aim is to enable members to have their office on any device connected to the internet with tools, access to information, e-mail, personal information management structured around the role/function of the user, enabling faster information flow and better decision making.
  • Portals deliver "context" around users activities and add value through customized intersite communications.”
  • portal software combines "unstructured" information, such as word processing documents, Web pages, and other text-based content, with "structured” information, such as that contained in corporate databases and other back-office systems. The whole package is then delivered to users through a Web interface and it aims to:
  • the cornerstone of a Portal is the apparently personalized look and feel that it offers to its users.
  • the technical requirements of a portal include:
  • a portal must allow its users to easily register on the site and customize their portal page to meet their needs.
  • a personalization layer needs to be provided that enables the end-user to further personalize their portal, allowing them to add personal information and individual settings such as look and feel, selection, as well as addition and removal of certain modules .
  • All portals require a content aggregation layer.
  • the aggregation layer gathers the applications, content, services and e-commerce from external and internal sources and brings them into the system.
  • a customization layer is required to allow the portal administrator to create and manage the personalized starting points for users of the site.
  • the setup, installation and maintenance of a portal is therefore not a trivial task and requires a lot of skills, e.g. manpower and computer power.
  • the market force will drive companies in the near future to run portals for all the reasons mentioned above.
  • the portal business however is not the core business of most of those companies.
  • the present invention discloses a portal hosting e-utility allowing hosting of individual portals with pervasive access for multiple customers (portal provider) on a common infrastructure.
  • the portal hosting e-utility preferably provides an interface to portal providers providing a portal at the PHU, to content providers providing content at the PHU, and to portal user accessing portals via the PHU.
  • the PHU preferably comprises a portal publishing interface component for definition of a virtual portal, a portal publishing tool for publishing the virtual portal, and a virtual portal engine for accessing the virtual portal by user.
  • the PHU provides a complete software and service environment in which virtual portals can be instantiated without having the entire IT- infrastructure at the portal provider side.
  • the portal provider only has to configure and to publish his portal content into an existing infrastructure instead of providing the entire portal web application.
  • the PHU offers a total transparent portal hosting infrastructure in which the user interacts only with the portal of the portal provider.
  • Fig.l shows a typical portal infrastructure as used in the prior art
  • Fig.2 shows the components of the inventive portal hosting e-utility
  • Fig.3 shows the instantiation (publication) of portals at the PHU
  • Fig.4 shows the content repository which is part of the PHU
  • Fig.5 shows the virtual portal engine which is part of the PHU
  • Fig.6 A shows the method for publishing portals at the PHU
  • Fig.6 B shows the method for publishing content to PHU
  • Fig.6 C shows the method for user registration at the PHU
  • Fig.6 D shows the method for user access to the virtual portal
  • Fig.6 E shows the method for administration access to the virtual portal
  • Fig.l it is shown a typical portal infrastructure as used in the prior art which comprises three tiers :
  • the connectivity gateway (40) is the interface between a server and devices (10) .
  • a gateway (40) is an adapter mapping various device specific network protocols, such as WAP, to the common TCP/IP based communication protocols applied on the server side (access-server; portal) .
  • Access servers or portal servers (30) access information stored on the content servers or content provider (20) on behalf of a client.
  • the server receives HTTP requests, manages communication and application sessions, executes business logic, and interacts with the appropriate back-end systems.
  • back-end content servers (20) provide data stored in data bases as well as other kinds of web content.
  • FIG.2 shows the components of the inventive portal hosting e- utility located in a portal infrastructure as described in Fig.l.
  • a portal hosting e-utility may be defined as a scalable, automated web application providing to the portal provider, content provider as well to the user devices (e.g. pervasive devices) a common infrastructure supporting m-business scenarios (e.g. integration of WW payment, tax and e-safe services) , providing fast and simple instantiation of customer portals with pervasive access, and providing a component for common content repository, enabling SLA based hosting contracts, and supporting rich media distribution.
  • Portal hosting e-utility preferably covers following IT- functions :
  • integrated connectivity gateways allow to communicate with wireless and wired networks including GSM, WAP, CDMA, TDMA, and TCP/IP
  • transcoding plug-ins can translate directly one data format into another one.
  • a synchronization engine is provided to keep content on devices and data servers consistent security: end-to-end security is achieved with authentication and access control mechanisms .
  • the portal hosting e-utility (70) as defined above has interfaces to the following groups:
  • portal provider (40) who are customer of the portal hosting e-utility
  • portal user (10) who are customer of the portal provider.
  • the interface between portal provider (40) and PHU (70) is established via the portal publishing tool (50).
  • the portal publishing tool (50) allows portal provider (40) to define/create a virtual portal customized to their needs and to publish it into the PHU (70) . It allows defining/creating web pages in various formats (e.g. HTML, WML) , portlets, servelets and content that shall be part of the portal and defining or importing user and administrator data.
  • the portal provider can publish deltas.
  • the portal may provide the option that the portal provider can select content published to the PHU (70) by content provider for inclusion into his virtual portal.
  • the portal publishing tool may either be implemented as a web application that runs at the PHU or may be implemented as an application that runs at the portal provider side and has a publishing function to send entire portal instance definition to the PHU.
  • the interface between the portal publishing tool and the PHU is the portal publishing interface component.
  • a prefered implementation of the portal publishing tool would be a Web Application which produces the neccessary data to define the portal instance in XML format according to the Interface which is understood by the portal publishing interface component.
  • the prefered implementation of the communication protocol between the portal publishing tool and the portal publishing interface component would be SOAP.
  • the interface between portal publishing tool (50) and PHU (70) is established via the portal publishing interface component (60).
  • the portal publishing interface component (60) allows portal providers (40) to publish entire virtual portals (80) or deltas into the PHU (70) . It defines messages to transmit the web pages, portlets, servlets, user subscription data, administrator data etc. that make up a virtual portal (80) .
  • This interface could be based on SOAP, for example.
  • the interface between content provider (20) and PHU (70) is established via the content publishing tool (140) .
  • This interface could be based on SOAP, for example.
  • the content publishing tool (140) allows content providers
  • the content provider interface component (120) allows content providers (20) to publish content via the PHU (70) . Via this interface component (120) , content providers (20) can publish content, descriptions of that content and agreements on use/sale/delivery of that content to the PHU (70) . Examples of content are news articles, weather information, stock prices etc. This interface could be based on SOAP, for example.
  • the content repository (100) holds the content published to the PHU (70. It also holds content descriptions and agreements on use/sale/delivery of content that has been published to the PHU (70) by content providers. It can be accessed by the portal publishing tool (50) to allow portal providers (40) to select content to be made available for their users .
  • the Content Cache (200) of the PHU (70) temporarily stores data obtained from the Internet or documents created from the Content Repository (for example by transcoding) via virtual portals. This cache (200) is shared between all virtual portals (80) hosted at the PHU (70) .
  • the virtual portal engine (30) provides user access to the virtual portals data (80) within the PHU (70) from their devices, e.g. WAP phones, PDAs, voice phones or Pcs (10) .
  • the virtual portal engine may include well known portal functions like content aggregation, customization, personalization.
  • the virtual portal engine uses URL of the user request to identify the portal instance data stored in a data base belonging to the PHU. Depending on that data it bills a personalized portal page for the particular user and returns it to the browser.
  • the virtual portal engine also manages the instances of the different portals and takes care that the goals for the various qualities of services for the portals of the individual portal providers which are defined by Service Level Agreements (SLA's) are met.
  • SLA's Service Level Agreements may be defined as an agreement between hoster and portal provider in which the portal provider has selected services offered by the hoster.
  • the SLA's may be concluded online via the portal publishing tool and provided to the virtual portal engine managing the services selected by the portal provider.
  • the virtual portal engine constantly measures these qualities of service and takes the appropriate actions if one of the service goals is in danger to be missed.
  • the portal hosting e-utility (70) provides a web application containing the necessary tools and components to setup a portal hosting infrastructure providing services to the portal provider (the customer of the portal hosting e- utility) . These services include: portal software maintenance web space hosting tools for portal pages administration user care (helpline) content brokering and cross licensing user accounting and metering
  • portal hosting e-utility provides a complete software and services environment in which virtual portals (80) can be instantiated.
  • the individual portal provider (40) only has to configure and to publish their portal content into the existing environment instead of providing the entire portal web application.
  • the terms and conditions of all services are defined as a set of Service-Level Agreements (SLA's) and are shrink wrapped in software in order to enable an electronic negotiation of those terms and conditions when using one of those services. All services are billed to the users of that service on a pay per usage/subscription base. For example all interactions of end users with a defined portal of a portal provider (40) are measured and the portal provider is charged based on those measured interactions .
  • SLA's Service-Level Agreements
  • the portal hosting e-utility environment is totally transparent to the portal user.
  • the portal user (10) interacts only with the virtual portal (80) of the portal provider (40) . Therefore any negotiations (legal contracts etc.) of the portal user concerning the usage of a portal is made with a portal provider (40) , not with the portal hosting e-utility
  • Additional revenue sources for the portal hosting e-utility result from managing the relationships between the portal users and the portal providers as well as between the portal providers and the content providers.
  • the portal hosting e- utility (70) handles the payments resulting from the service level agreements and reduces the processing for the portal provider .
  • the portal hosting e-utility (70) provides superior service as a portal provider with less effort and with additional revenue sources .
  • the superior quality of service for the portal users and portal providers results from the synergetic effects of hosting multiple portals.
  • a cross portal caching mechanism (200) helps to optimize the general access to any information for all hosted portals.
  • the ability to host portals together with their content sources further speeds up the access to information available from other content/portal providers. Finally the access to short latency information is provided to all portal providers .
  • the portal providers (40) benefit from the outsourcing of the portal hosting and the simplification of the portal management .
  • Common services necessary for portal administration are handled by the portal hosting e-utility.
  • Managing access to content providers (20) from within the portal becomes simpler because it is now unified and handled by the portal hosting e-utility (70) .
  • Fig. 3 briefly describes the portal instantiation at the PHU according to the present invention.
  • the hoster (22) provides portal templates (81) via its portal publishing tool (not shown) to the customer (portal provider; 44) .
  • the portal provider or customer (44) can define/create a customized virtual portal (custom portal; 45) based on the templates (81), e.g. special content definition or customer logo.
  • the user (66) can create a personal portal (67) by using the functionality offered by the customer portal (45), e.g. user preferences (weather, sport etc.) or content to be displayed (personal portal) .
  • Fig. 4 briefly describes the portal content repository as used by the PHU.
  • the content providers (20) provides content in a certain data format to the global content repository (100) .
  • the content aggregation layer (160) can translate directly one data format into another, in order to adapt content for specific device capabilities supported by the individual virtual portals (80) .
  • Fig. 5 briefly describes the virtual portal engine.
  • the virtual portal engine (30) secures access to the virtual portals (80) within the PHU. Furthermore, the virtual portal engine (30) may additionally include or provide access to an authentication and payment function.
  • the virtual portal engine may include well known portal functions like content aggregation, customization, personalization. When a user navigates to the portal hosted by the PHU using his browser the virtual portal engine uses URL of the user request to identify the portal instance data stored in a data base belonging to the PHU. Depending on that data it bills a personalized portal page for the particular user and returns it to the browser.
  • Fig. 6 A-E shows the method steps within the single components of the PHU.
  • Fig.6 A shows the method steps for publishing a virtual portal as follows:
  • the Portal Provider creates a virtual portal using the portal publishing tool (200) . He can decide to make content from the content repository available to his users .
  • the portal provider publishes the virtual portal using the portal publishing tool, through the portal publishing interface (400) .
  • the portal provider makes changes to the virtual portal by using the portal publishing tool (e.g. adding more users or administrators; 600) .
  • the portal provider publishes the changes using the portal publishing tool via the portal publishing interface (800) .
  • Fig. 6 B shows the method steps for creation and publishing of content as follows:
  • the content provider creates content, content description and terms and conditions using the content publishing tool (250) .
  • the content is provided to the content repository via the content publishing interface (350).
  • Fig.6 C shows the method steps for registration of a user.
  • the user navigates to the URL of a virtual portal hosted at the PHU (220) .
  • the PHU adds the user to the virtual portal (420) .
  • Fig. 6 D shows the method steps for accessing a virtual portal by an user.
  • the user navigates to the URL of a virtual portal hosted at the PHU (230) .
  • Fig.6 E shows the method steps for accessing a virtual portal by an administrator as follows:
  • the administrator navigates to the administration URL of a virtual portal hosted by the PHU (240) .
  • the administrator enters user ID and password (340) .
  • the administrator may add users, remove users, define user groups, remove user groups, grant access to content, withdraw access to content, add and remove content etc.

Abstract

The present invention discloses a portal hosting e-utility allowing hosting of individual portals with pervasive access for multiple customers (portal provider) on a common infrastructure. The portal hosting e-utility (PHU) preferably provides an interface to portal providers providing a portal at the PHU, to content providers providing content at the PHU, and to portal user accessing portals via the PHU. The PHU preferably comprises a portal publishing interface component for definition of a virtual portal, a portal publishing tool for publishing the virtual portal, and a virtual portal engine for accessing the virtual portal by users. The PHU provides a complete software and service environment in which virtual portals can be instantiated without having the entire IT-infrastructure at the portal provider side. The portal provider only has to configure and to publish his portal content into an existing infrastructure instead of providing the entire portal web application. Finally, the PHU offers a total transparent portal hosting infrastructure in which the user interacts only with the portal of the portal provider.

Description

D E S C R I P T I O N
SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR HOSTING CUSTOMISED WEB PORTALS
The present invention is related to a system and method for providing portals into the Internet, especially for providing high scalable and automated portals into Internet without establishing and maintaining the entire portal IT-environment on the portal provider side.
Background
In general, most computer on-line services are accessed via the Internet. The Internet is a global network of computers. One popular part of the Internet is the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web contains computers which display graphical and textual information. Computers which provide information on the World Wide Web are typically called "websites". A website is defined by an Internet address which has an associated electronic page, often called a "home page." Generally, a home page is an electronic document which organizes the presentation of text, graphical images, audio and video into a desired display. These websites are operated by a wide variety of entities which are typically called "content providers." The user can then access information at any address accessible over the Internet. Information exchanged over the Internet is typically encoded in HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML) format. The HTML format is a scripting language which is used to generate the home pages for different content providers . In this setting, a content provider is an individual or company that places information (content) on the Internet so that it can be accessed by others .
Pervasive computing devices like PDAs, mobile phones may function as the delivery point of service offerings from the Internet. Another kind of access service is getting more important :
Internet portals, such as Yahoo, offer logical entry points through which selected content can be accessed by user. Portals are gateways to the Internet. Typical portals combine information from many content provider and deliver them in a single unified view to the portal user. A portal may have the same appearance to all user or a personalized appearance for each user. It provides to its users an interface that displays relevant information and application access in a user friendly format. Some of the common services delivered via portals include: news, weather, traffic info, stock prices, e-mail, personal web pages, guides, shopping, community building, etc.
Although the portal concept originated with the Internet, corporations are increasingly eager to apply this technology to the corporate intranet. The corporate portal business value is to knock down the barriers to sharing knowledge, enabling the realization of concepts like "corporate memory" and "meetings without walls". The aim is to enable members to have their office on any device connected to the internet with tools, access to information, e-mail, personal information management structured around the role/function of the user, enabling faster information flow and better decision making. Portals deliver "context" around users activities and add value through customized intersite communications."
The market opportunity for portal solutions is in the area of corporate portals where medium to large companies would like to build an Intranet and Internet site where company information could be more easily found by site visitors, and in the vertical portal space where net-gen companies will attempt to gain Internet marketshare by building a premier electronic community. The technical requirements of a portal come in two flavors: the infrastructure level (or as described above, the data center level) and the portal software/enablement level. Portal software combines "unstructured" information, such as word processing documents, Web pages, and other text-based content, with "structured" information, such as that contained in corporate databases and other back-office systems. The whole package is then delivered to users through a Web interface and it aims to:
Increase site utility via user personalization
Build and foster community
Enable one-to-one marketing relationships with customers
Supply targeted product information and offerings
Provide industry-specific content and services to increase
"stickiness" .
The cornerstone of a Portal is the apparently personalized look and feel that it offers to its users. The technical requirements of a portal include:
Support for administrators and viewers (including registration and authentication with single sign-on)
Support for Content Aggregation
Hosted content, linked content and syndicated services, and business services
Notification about availability of selected or new content
Integration with legacy systems, and business intelligence systems
Desktop and community focussed applications
Content and site cataloging and search
Support for personalization (including user preferences within the constraints of the users role/function)
Support for Customization
A portal must allow its users to easily register on the site and customize their portal page to meet their needs. A personalization layer needs to be provided that enables the end-user to further personalize their portal, allowing them to add personal information and individual settings such as look and feel, selection, as well as addition and removal of certain modules . All portals require a content aggregation layer. The aggregation layer gathers the applications, content, services and e-commerce from external and internal sources and brings them into the system. Likewise, a customization layer is required to allow the portal administrator to create and manage the personalized starting points for users of the site.
The setup, installation and maintenance of a portal is therefore not a trivial task and requires a lot of skills, e.g. manpower and computer power. The market force will drive companies in the near future to run portals for all the reasons mentioned above. The portal business however is not the core business of most of those companies.
Therefore, it is object of the present invention to provide a system and method for providing portal business into the Internet by a portal provider without requiring the entire portal IT-infrastructure on the portal provider side.
This object is solved by the independent claims. Preferred embodiments are laid down in the dependent claims.
Summary of the invention
The present invention discloses a portal hosting e-utility allowing hosting of individual portals with pervasive access for multiple customers (portal provider) on a common infrastructure. The portal hosting e-utility (PHU) preferably provides an interface to portal providers providing a portal at the PHU, to content providers providing content at the PHU, and to portal user accessing portals via the PHU. The PHU preferably comprises a portal publishing interface component for definition of a virtual portal, a portal publishing tool for publishing the virtual portal, and a virtual portal engine for accessing the virtual portal by user. The PHU provides a complete software and service environment in which virtual portals can be instantiated without having the entire IT- infrastructure at the portal provider side. The portal provider only has to configure and to publish his portal content into an existing infrastructure instead of providing the entire portal web application. Finally, the PHU offers a total transparent portal hosting infrastructure in which the user interacts only with the portal of the portal provider.
Brief description of the drawings
In the following a preferred implementation of the present invention is described with reference to the drawings in which
Fig.l shows a typical portal infrastructure as used in the prior art
Fig.2 shows the components of the inventive portal hosting e-utility
Fig.3 shows the instantiation (publication) of portals at the PHU
Fig.4 shows the content repository which is part of the PHU
Fig.5 shows the virtual portal engine which is part of the PHU Fig.6 A shows the method for publishing portals at the PHU
Fig.6 B shows the method for publishing content to PHU
Fig.6 C shows the method for user registration at the PHU
Fig.6 D shows the method for user access to the virtual portal
Fig.6 E shows the method for administration access to the virtual portal
In Fig.l it is shown a typical portal infrastructure as used in the prior art which comprises three tiers :
The connectivity gateway (40) is the interface between a server and devices (10) . A gateway (40) is an adapter mapping various device specific network protocols, such as WAP, to the common TCP/IP based communication protocols applied on the server side (access-server; portal) .
Access servers or portal servers (30) access information stored on the content servers or content provider (20) on behalf of a client. The server receives HTTP requests, manages communication and application sessions, executes business logic, and interacts with the appropriate back-end systems.
Finally, the back-end content servers (20) provide data stored in data bases as well as other kinds of web content.
Fig.2 shows the components of the inventive portal hosting e- utility located in a portal infrastructure as described in Fig.l. A portal hosting e-utility may be defined as a scalable, automated web application providing to the portal provider, content provider as well to the user devices (e.g. pervasive devices) a common infrastructure supporting m-business scenarios (e.g. integration of WW payment, tax and e-safe services) , providing fast and simple instantiation of customer portals with pervasive access, and providing a component for common content repository, enabling SLA based hosting contracts, and supporting rich media distribution. Portal hosting e-utility preferably covers following IT- functions :
connectivity: integrated connectivity gateways allow to communicate with wireless and wired networks including GSM, WAP, CDMA, TDMA, and TCP/IP
content handling: transcoding plug-ins can translate directly one data format into another one.
notification: informing the user about the availability of new content
A synchronization engine is provided to keep content on devices and data servers consistent security: end-to-end security is achieved with authentication and access control mechanisms .
Optimization: load balancing and caching are applied to achieve scalability.
Management service: device and subscriber management, billing, accounting, customers, and provisioning help to control connectable devices . The portal hosting e-utility (70) as defined above has interfaces to the following groups:
portal provider (40) , who are customer of the portal hosting e-utility,
content provider (20) , who publish content to the portal hosting e-utility,
portal user (10) , who are customer of the portal provider.
The interface between portal provider (40) and PHU (70) is established via the portal publishing tool (50). The portal publishing tool (50) allows portal provider (40) to define/create a virtual portal customized to their needs and to publish it into the PHU (70) . It allows defining/creating web pages in various formats (e.g. HTML, WML) , portlets, servelets and content that shall be part of the portal and defining or importing user and administrator data. After creating and publishing a virtual portal to the PHU (70) , the portal provider can publish deltas. The portal may provide the option that the portal provider can select content published to the PHU (70) by content provider for inclusion into his virtual portal. The portal publishing tool may either be implemented as a web application that runs at the PHU or may be implemented as an application that runs at the portal provider side and has a publishing function to send entire portal instance definition to the PHU. In either case the interface between the portal publishing tool and the PHU is the portal publishing interface component. A prefered implementation of the portal publishing tool would be a Web Application which produces the neccessary data to define the portal instance in XML format according to the Interface which is understood by the portal publishing interface component. The prefered implementation of the communication protocol between the portal publishing tool and the portal publishing interface component would be SOAP.
The interface between portal publishing tool (50) and PHU (70) is established via the portal publishing interface component (60). The portal publishing interface component (60) allows portal providers (40) to publish entire virtual portals (80) or deltas into the PHU (70) . It defines messages to transmit the web pages, portlets, servlets, user subscription data, administrator data etc. that make up a virtual portal (80) . This interface could be based on SOAP, for example.
The interface between content provider (20) and PHU (70) is established via the content publishing tool (140) .
This interface could be based on SOAP, for example.
The content publishing tool (140) allows content providers
(20) to easily publish content to the PHU (70) for use by virtual portals (80) hosted by the PHU (70) . It lets the content provider (20) create content and publish it to the PHU
(70) via the PHU's Content Provider Interface component (120).
The content provider interface component (120) allows content providers (20) to publish content via the PHU (70) . Via this interface component (120) , content providers (20) can publish content, descriptions of that content and agreements on use/sale/delivery of that content to the PHU (70) . Examples of content are news articles, weather information, stock prices etc. This interface could be based on SOAP, for example.
The content repository (100) holds the content published to the PHU (70. It also holds content descriptions and agreements on use/sale/delivery of content that has been published to the PHU (70) by content providers. It can be accessed by the portal publishing tool (50) to allow portal providers (40) to select content to be made available for their users . The Content Cache (200) of the PHU (70) temporarily stores data obtained from the Internet or documents created from the Content Repository (for example by transcoding) via virtual portals. This cache (200) is shared between all virtual portals (80) hosted at the PHU (70) .
The virtual portal engine (30) provides user access to the virtual portals data (80) within the PHU (70) from their devices, e.g. WAP phones, PDAs, voice phones or Pcs (10) . The virtual portal engine may include well known portal functions like content aggregation, customization, personalization. When a user navigates to the portal hosted by the PHU using his browser the virtual portal engine uses URL of the user request to identify the portal instance data stored in a data base belonging to the PHU. Depending on that data it bills a personalized portal page for the particular user and returns it to the browser.
The virtual portal engine also manages the instances of the different portals and takes care that the goals for the various qualities of services for the portals of the individual portal providers which are defined by Service Level Agreements (SLA's) are met. Service Level Agreements may be defined as an agreement between hoster and portal provider in which the portal provider has selected services offered by the hoster. The SLA's may be concluded online via the portal publishing tool and provided to the virtual portal engine managing the services selected by the portal provider. The virtual portal engine constantly measures these qualities of service and takes the appropriate actions if one of the service goals is in danger to be missed. So for example if a Service Level Agreement for the response time of a user action is defined for a specified portal and this response time is getting too long, the Virtual Portal Engine assignes more processing power to this portal in order to meet that goal. In summary, the portal hosting e-utility (70) provides a web application containing the necessary tools and components to setup a portal hosting infrastructure providing services to the portal provider (the customer of the portal hosting e- utility) . These services include: portal software maintenance web space hosting tools for portal pages administration user care (helpline) content brokering and cross licensing user accounting and metering
In contrast to general application hosting or complex web hosting the portal hosting e-utility provides a complete software and services environment in which virtual portals (80) can be instantiated. The individual portal provider (40) only has to configure and to publish their portal content into the existing environment instead of providing the entire portal web application.
It also provides services and a defined publishing/syndication interface for content providers (20) who want to publish their content through portal (s) run by the portal hosting e-utility (70) .
Negotiation services between the content providers (20) and the portal providers (40) about terms and conditions for the usage of the content are also provided by the portal hosting e-utility (70) .
The terms and conditions of all services are defined as a set of Service-Level Agreements (SLA's) and are shrink wrapped in software in order to enable an electronic negotiation of those terms and conditions when using one of those services. All services are billed to the users of that service on a pay per usage/subscription base. For example all interactions of end users with a defined portal of a portal provider (40) are measured and the portal provider is charged based on those measured interactions .
The portal hosting e-utility environment is totally transparent to the portal user. The portal user (10) interacts only with the virtual portal (80) of the portal provider (40) . Therefore any negotiations (legal contracts etc.) of the portal user concerning the usage of a portal is made with a portal provider (40) , not with the portal hosting e-utility
(70) . The idea is not to charge the portal user for any usage of one of the portals run by the portal hosting e-utility
(70), but to offer accounting and metering services to the portal provider (40) where the portal provider can gather the data necessary to bill his portal user. However in addition services for billing the portal user can be offered to the portal provider (40).
Additional revenue sources for the portal hosting e-utility result from managing the relationships between the portal users and the portal providers as well as between the portal providers and the content providers. The portal hosting e- utility (70) handles the payments resulting from the service level agreements and reduces the processing for the portal provider .
The portal hosting e-utility (70) provides superior service as a portal provider with less effort and with additional revenue sources . The superior quality of service for the portal users and portal providers results from the synergetic effects of hosting multiple portals. A cross portal caching mechanism (200) helps to optimize the general access to any information for all hosted portals. The ability to host portals together with their content sources further speeds up the access to information available from other content/portal providers. Finally the access to short latency information is provided to all portal providers .
The portal providers (40) benefit from the outsourcing of the portal hosting and the simplification of the portal management . Common services necessary for portal administration are handled by the portal hosting e-utility. Managing access to content providers (20) from within the portal becomes simpler because it is now unified and handled by the portal hosting e-utility (70) .
Fig. 3 briefly describes the portal instantiation at the PHU according to the present invention.
In the first step the hoster (22) provides portal templates (81) via its portal publishing tool (not shown) to the customer (portal provider; 44) . In the second step the portal provider or customer (44) can define/create a customized virtual portal (custom portal; 45) based on the templates (81), e.g. special content definition or customer logo.
Finally, in the last step the user (66) can create a personal portal (67) by using the functionality offered by the customer portal (45), e.g. user preferences (weather, sport etc.) or content to be displayed (personal portal) .
Fig. 4 briefly describes the portal content repository as used by the PHU.
The content providers (20) provides content in a certain data format to the global content repository (100) . The content aggregation layer (160) can translate directly one data format into another, in order to adapt content for specific device capabilities supported by the individual virtual portals (80) .
Fig. 5 briefly describes the virtual portal engine.
It is an essential function of the portal hosting e-utility that the user has no knowledge that the portal is hosted by another company. The virtual portal engine (30) secures access to the virtual portals (80) within the PHU. Furthermore, the virtual portal engine (30) may additionally include or provide access to an authentication and payment function. The virtual portal engine may include well known portal functions like content aggregation, customization, personalization. When a user navigates to the portal hosted by the PHU using his browser the virtual portal engine uses URL of the user request to identify the portal instance data stored in a data base belonging to the PHU. Depending on that data it bills a personalized portal page for the particular user and returns it to the browser.
Fig. 6 A-E shows the method steps within the single components of the PHU.
Fig.6 A shows the method steps for publishing a virtual portal as follows:
1. The Portal Provider creates a virtual portal using the portal publishing tool (200) . He can decide to make content from the content repository available to his users .
2. The portal provider publishes the virtual portal using the portal publishing tool, through the portal publishing interface (400) . 3. The portal provider makes changes to the virtual portal by using the portal publishing tool (e.g. adding more users or administrators; 600) .
4. The portal provider publishes the changes using the portal publishing tool via the portal publishing interface (800) .
Fig. 6 B shows the method steps for creation and publishing of content as follows:
1. The content provider creates content, content description and terms and conditions using the content publishing tool (250) .
2. The content is provided to the content repository via the content publishing interface (350).
3. Content descriptions, the terms and conditions and the content itself is accessible by the portal providers via the portal publishing tool (450) .
Fig.6 C shows the method steps for registration of a user.
1. The user navigates to the URL of a virtual portal hosted at the PHU (220) .
2. The user clicks on the "Register" link.
3. The user completes the registration form (320).
4. The PHU adds the user to the virtual portal (420) .
Fig. 6 D shows the method steps for accessing a virtual portal by an user.
1. The user navigates to the URL of a virtual portal hosted at the PHU (230) .
2. The user clicks on sign-in.
3. The user enters user ID and password (330)
4. The user's personal portal view is presented (430). Fig.6 E shows the method steps for accessing a virtual portal by an administrator as follows:
1. The administrator navigates to the administration URL of a virtual portal hosted by the PHU (240) .
2. The administrator enters user ID and password (340) .
3. The administrator's menu is presented (440).
4. The administrator may add users, remove users, define user groups, remove user groups, grant access to content, withdraw access to content, add and remove content etc.
(540) . Some administrative tasks may be handled automatically by a program.

Claims

C L A I M S
1. Portal hosting e-utility (70) comprising:
a portal publishing tool (50) for defining a virtual portal (80)
a portal publishing interface component (60) for publishing said defined virtual portal data into a data base (80)
a virtual portal engine (30) for providing access to said virtual portal data.
2. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 1, further comprises :
a content publishing tool (140) for defining content data by a content provider
a content provider interface component (120) for publishing said defined content data to a content repository (100) .
3. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 1 or 2, further uses or comprises a content cache (200) for temporarily storing content data obtained from the Internet or documents created from said content repository (100) .
4. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 1, wherein said portal publishing tool (50) having access to content data stored on said content repository (100) .
5. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 1, wherein said virtual portal engine (30) provides access to said cache depending on the user specified information.
6. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 2, wherein said virtual portal engine manages said virtual portal in dependency of the services defined in a SLV.
7. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 1, wherein said portal publishing tool (50) is located at the portal provider system and said portal publishing interface component (60) and said virtual portal engine (30) are located at the hoster system, wherein said portal publishing interface component receives virtual portal definition data from said portal publishing tool via a data connection between said portal provider system and said hoster system.
8. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 1, wherein said portal publishing tool (50) , said portal publishing interface component (60) and said virtual portal engine (30) are located at the hoster system having a data connection to said portal provider system.
9. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 2, wherein said content publishing tool (140) is located at the content provider system and said content provider interface component (120) is located at the hoster system having a data connection to said content provider system.
10. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 2, wherein content publishing tool (140) and content publishing interface component (120) are located at said hoster system.
11. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 1, wherein said virtual portal engine (30) having an interface to a gateway component mapping various device specific network protocols to the common TCP/IP based communication protocols applied by said virtual portal engine.
12. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 2, further comprising a content notification function having access to said content repository (100) for notification of users of the portal about availability of new content.
13. Portal hosting e-utility according to claim 2, further comprising a content aggregation layer (160) having access to said content repository (100) for translating one data format into another in order to adapt content for specific device capabilities supported by the virtual portal (80) .
14. Portal provider system in a portal hosting architecture comprising a portal hosting e-utility according to claim 1, a portal provider system and a hoster system, wherein said portal provider system comprising:
a portal publishing tool for defining virtual portal data
a communication component for sending said virtual portal data to said portal publishing interface component located at said hoster system.
15. Hoster system in a portal hosting architecture having a portal provider system and hoster system connected via a data connection, comprising a portal e-utility according to claim 1.
16. Method for hosting portals by means of a portal hosting e-utility according to claim 1 to 13 comprising the steps :
receiving virtual portal data defined by means of said portal publishing tool via said portal publishing interface component located at said hoster side,
publishing said virtual portal data by means of said portal publishing interface tool to a data base located at the hoster side, and
accessing said virtual portal via said virtual portal engine by user.
17. Method according to claim 16, further comprises the steps of:
receiving content defined by means of said content publishing tool by said content publishing interface component located at the hoster side
publishing said content by means of said content publishing interface component to said content repository located at said hoster side.
18. Method according to claim 16 and 17, further comprises the steps :
navigating user to said virtual portal hosted in said data base by means of said portal engine located at said hoster side.
9. Computer program product stored in the internal memory of a digital computer, containing parts of software code to execute the method in accordance with claims 16 to 18 if the product is run on the computer.
PCT/EP2001/015253 2001-02-16 2001-12-21 System and method for hosting customised web portals WO2002067140A1 (en)

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