Web access point. A portal consists of web pages that act as a starting point for using the Web or web-based services. The word was first used to describe the sites of popular Internet access providers or search engines such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo! Later on, it was extended into the world of work, where a corporate portal or enterprise information portal acts as a starting point for employees or associates of an organization to access corporate information and applications. Portal software has become a distinct class of web server software that acts as a platform for deploying portals. An OASIS standard, Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP), aims to make it easier to automatically include services in portals.