portali

Portali is the plural form of portale in Italian, meaning portals or gateways. In architecture and art, a portale is the monumental doorway or entrance to a building, often framed by ornamentation and serving as a visual centerpiece on the façade. In Italian architectural history, portali can feature sculpted reliefs, rusticated frames, or arched openings and may signify the importance of the building or its owners.

In information technology, portali, often anglicized as web portals, are centralized access points that aggregate content, services, and applications for a defined user community. They may provide single sign-on, personalization, search, and navigation across disparate systems. They can be consumer portals for the general public, enterprise portals for employees, or partner and vertical portals for specific industries or partner networks.

Portals typically include components such as content management, collaboration tools, and application integration. In Java-based portals, the portlet concept (portlets are modular UI components) enables grouping of services to be displayed on a portal page; standards such as JSR 168 and JSR 286 guided development. Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) and other interoperability efforts further supported cross-vendor use. Popular portal platforms have included IBM WebSphere Portal, Oracle Portal, Liferay, and Microsoft SharePoint; many modern portals are built as part of digital experience platforms and cloud-based suites.

In contemporary Italian usage, portali simply refers to portals, including online portals and physical gateways.