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The term “portal” is not very well defined. Very often it is used for a website providing access to a set of information and applications. A google search “portal” results in 98.9 million hits!
I have been working on portal technology since 1998 mainly by developing the IBM Websphere Portal Server with my development team in the IBM Lab in Boeblingen, Germany. The WebSphere Portal Server focus was on open portals by creation of standards like JSR168 and OASIS WSRP. Portals adhering to this standards are provided by major IT suppliers (IBM, SAP, ORACLE ... ) but also by Open Source initiatives. A recent Google search for ”portal portlet“ resulted in 262.000 hits. Certainly I am emotionally attached to this type portal, being involved with the team at IBM in Boeblingen in the conception and implementation of the horizotal portal and portlet concept and its key standards for more than six years.Certainly portals must be interoperable to allow the vision of a worldwide user centric web world to become true. The portal concept has been picked up by almost any major IT supplier. Unfortunately Microsoft Sharepoint portal server but also Google apps have created proprietary portals for use also with private people.
However, all portal technologies provide some interoperability e.g. Google functions can be somehow integrated into IBM or Microsoft portals
Two years after the launch of the WebSpere Portal (using JSR168 and WSRP standards) Microsoft has launched the MS Sharepoint Portal in response to the bold move of IBM. The SP 2003 version was really a weird combination of technologies but it looked like a portal, had some nice easy to use functions and was marketed very aggressively. Most interesting for private users are Sharepoint Portal Hosting offerings for small business or consumers. Price is as low as 10 $/month. I am using MS Sharepoint Portal for small communities and rapid prototyping. More recently Google has also launched some sort of portal “Google Apps”, which is still much Beta and reflect the portal state of the art ov about 2001
The Portaleco site will discuss the different technologies mainly under the aspect of user and community support and leave the more technical discussions to the portal technical community.
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