All the News | Strategy | Marketing | Technology | Profiles | Industry

Portal Software Offers Single Point of Access to Applications, Data and Web-Based Content from PC's and Wireless Devices

The WebSphere Portal Server is a horizontal portal that exploits the scalability and power of IBM’s WebSphere Application Server; IBM Enterprise Information Portal for information access; Lotus software for collaboration and knowledge management, and WebSphere Everyplace Suite for pervasive device support.

IBM also is expanding its partner program to take advantage of the rapidly growing market opportunities in portals. IBM's PartnerWorld for Developers will be the entry point for solution developers to participate in portal integration.

The enhanced partner program is being launched initially with four business partners who will offer WebSphere Portal Server and Lotus K-station users access to more than 30,000 content sources ranging from stocks, industry news, world news, weather, sports and much more.

The content providers are:

o Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters Company, provides global news and business information through Web sites and content integration solutions. Factiva's integration tools allow users to access Factiva's database of nearly 6,000 multi-language sources such as The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, The South China Morning Post and the Dow Jones, Reuters and AP newswires.

o Hoover's (NASDAQ: HOOV), headquartered in Austin, Texas. Hoover's provides online business information, tools, and content integration and syndication technology and aggregates business information on more than 65,000 companies, including the 17,000 public, private and non-US businesses found in its proprietary database.

o iSyndicate is a global provider of Internet syndication infrastructure and application solutions. Utilizing its Intelligent Syndication Network (ISN) platform, iSyndicate collects, packages and delivers digital content and other information from over 1,200 sources, including AccuWeather, Agence France-Press, the Associated Press, CNBC, CNET, The Financial Times, Red Herring, RollingStone.com and The South China Morning Post.

o ScreamingMedia (NASDAQ: SCRM), a global provider of content solutions, including content products and content processing and integration technology. ScreamingMedia's core technology platform powers both private and general syndication networks for media companies, enterprises and wireless networks, worldwide.

“Portals have become a critical component of the software ecosystem and will have a role in the emerging category of Web services,” said Gene Phifer, vice president and research director, Gartner. “Two extremely important portal functions are content aggregation and data/application integration. These are requirements for facilitating interaction and integration with employees, customers, partners, suppliers and distributors.”

A Complete Horizontal Portal Framework 

WebSphere Portal Server provides an open, scalable framework for enabling the aggregation of applications and information from various content sources, including corporate data and the Internet, into a personalized portal. IBM's portal software offers navigation, customization, personalization, information and application interaction, pervasive device support, syndicated content access, integration for federated search and categorization, and user or group administration.

Enterprises can create portals that enable mobile users to interact with the applications and information they need to do their jobs from virtually anywhere, at any time.

Pre-integrated portlets to speed deployment 

A portal application, known as a portlet, is a window into specific content or an application source. The WebSphere Portal Server provides customized portlets that support PCs, mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and other pervasive devices.

IBM is committed to participating in establishing industry standards to support a broad portfolio of portlets working across all components of IBM's portal strategy and the portal community at large. Additional portlets for use by Websphere Portal Server, Lotus K-station, and other portals built on top of WebSphere Portal Server will ship continuously throughout 2001.

Lotus K-station provides collaboration capabilities 

A major component of IBM's portal software strategy is Lotus's K-station, software specifically focused on knowledge management and collaboration. Lotus K-station is a ready-made, collaborative portal application that organizes and manages multi-lingual, unstructured business content by community, interest, task or job focus.

WebSphere Portal Server is an infrastructure for building many types of portals across B2B, B2C, and B2E and will be used as part of the K-station solution in line with IBM's portal strategy. Lotus's Sametime messaging and Quickplace team room, plus other Lotus products, will be available as portlets for customers to use in their portal implementations.

Information access and integration 

Advanced information integration well beyond the traditional access and view capabilities provided by most portals is achieved with the integration of WebSphere Portal Server and IBM's Enterprise Information Portal. Extended capabilities include categorization, summarization, workflow, connectors to a wide variety of data sources, and in addition to view, the ability to perform create, retrieve, update, and delete functions in enterprise processes.

Extensive pervasive device support 

WebSphere Portal Server, when used in conjunction with WebSphere Everyplace Suite, supports a wide variety of mobile devices for interacting with portals. WebSphere Portal Server generates HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) content that can be rendered by browsers on PCs, and WML (Wireless Markup Language) content that is typically available on WAP phones and PDAs. In April, 2001, WebSphere Portal Server will be enhanced to support i-mode devices.

WebSphere Portal Server is available today on AIX and will support Windows NT and Solaris in April, 2001. It is single- and double-byte enabled. Pricing is based on the number of users and the cost per user decreases as the number of users increases. WebSphere Portal Server also will be available with per CPU pricing.

Source: IBM March 21, 2001

FREE NEWSLETTER, click here