Sun Microsystems Portal Server 6 2005Q1, Planning Manual

Page: 52 / 192

Business Objectives
52 Portal Server 6 2005Q1 • Deployment Planning Guide
The business goals of your portal affect deployment decision. Understand your
objectives. If you do not understand your business requirements, you can easily
make erroneous assumptions that could affect the accuracy of your deployment
estimates.
Use these questions to help you identify your business objectives:
• What are the business goals of this portal? (For example, do you want to
enhance customer service? Increase employee productivity? Reduce the cost of
doing business?)
• What kind of portal do you need? (For example, business-to-business,
business-to-consumer , business-to-enterprise, or a hybrid?)
• Who is your target audience?
• What services or functions will the portal deliver to users?
• How will the target audience benefit from the portal?
• What are the priorities for the portal? (If you plan to deploy your portal in
phases, identify priorities for each phase.)
(Optional) Use these questions to help identify your business objectives if you are
deploying a secure portal:
• Do you need to increase employee productivity (by making your intranet
applications and servers accessible over the Internet)?
• Do you need to provide secure access to your portal?
• Do you need to reduce cost of ownership of an existing Virtual Private
Network (VPN) solution?
• Do you want employees to access intranet applications such as Citrix and
pcAnywhere from the Internet?
• Do you want your employees to explore intranet servers or machines from the
Internet?
• Who is your target audience (all portal users, employees, or customers)?