WebSphere

 

Portal Express, Version 6.0
Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux, Windows

 

Product overview

IBM® WebSphere® Portal Express consists of middleware applications (called portlets), and development tools for building and managing secure business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-employee (B2E) portals.

The base offering of WebSphere Portal Express provides personalization, web content management, document management, productivity functions along with the scalable portal framework. The extended offering adds powerful collaborative features to enhance portal effectiveness.

A portal is a Web site that provides users with a single point of access to Web-based resources by aggregating those resources in one place and by requiring that users log in only to the portal itself, and not to each portlet they use. WebSphere Portal Express can deliver Web content to WAP-enabled devices and i-Mode phones, and to various Web browsers.

As an administrator, you can customize WebSphere Portal Express to meet the needs of your organization, users, and user groups. You can adapt the look and feel of the portal to fit the standards of your organization and to customize page content for users and groups in accordance with business rules and user profiles. Users, such as business partners, customers, or employees, can further customize their own views of the portal. Users can add portlets to pages and arrange them as they want and control portlet color schemes. By aggregating portlets in one place and giving users the power to customize their own desktops, WebSphere Portal Express gives users a means for doing business efficiently and with high satisfaction.

Portlets are central to WebSphere Portal Express. As special reusable Java servlets that appear as defined regions on portal pages, portlets provide access to many different applications, services, and Web content. WebSphere Portal Express ships a rich set of standard portlets, including portlets for displaying syndicated content, transforming XML, and accessing search engines and Web pages. Portlets for accessing Lotus Notes®, IBM Lotus® Domino® and Extended Products (IBM Lotus Sametime® and IBM Lotus QuickPlace®), Microsoft Exchange, and instant messaging are included. Several third-party portlets are also available. Examples include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) portlets. In addition, WebSphere Portal Express ships an API that portlet developers can use to create custom portlets.

 

WebSphere platform

WebSphere(R) is infrastructure software for dynamic e-business, delivering a proven, secure, and reliable software portfolio.

Providing comprehensive e-business leadership, WebSphere evolves to meet the demands of companies that are faced with challenging business environments, such as the need for increasing operations efficiencies, strengthening customer loyalty, and integrating disparate systems.

Leading customers toward dynamic e-business means WebSphere provides answers to these challenging business environments. WebSphere is the only e-business platform that can provide everything you need to build, deploy, and integrate your e-business, including: Foundation and Tools, Business Portals, Business Integration, and Transaction Servers and Tools.

Together, these facets of the WebSphere software platform close the gap between business strategy and information technology, allowing you to create and operate a dynamic e-business. By utilizing each side of the WebSphere pyramid, you can power your business and drive your success.

For additional information about new features, main components, and what each component provides to the overall solution, explore the subtopics of this section. Details for installing, configuring and using the product are provided in each of the major topics listed in the navigation frame.

triangle showing three facets of the WebSphere software platform: Business Portals, Business Integration, and Foundation and Tools

The following topics provide additional overview information.