Building an Enterprise Information Portal Using Open Source Software

Information portals are considered as a gateway to internal and external information within enterprises. There are many commercial software for building such gateways, which are usually expensive. Open source software is being considered seriously as an alternative to commercial software by many organizations. This is partly because of uncertainty and unreliability of commercial systems and software exploited by recent computer viruses, and significant saving on total cost of ownership. In this article, we present our experience in building an open source based information portal for Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and discuss some of the issues encountered during the development process.