Open Source Portals

by Brian J. Dooley

Enterprise portals are becoming an increasingly important tool in the integration of data access and applications, in providing a platform for convergence of numerous different services, and in supporting and enabling collaboration. The portal market now includes an array of players, ranging from massive development frameworks such as IBM WebSphere to simplified portals for smaller businesses and peripheral operations as well as portals dedicated to specific functions. While IBM, Microsoft, and BEA have achieved some degree of dominance at the high end, much of the portal space remains up for grabs. This is significant in that corporations will most likely adopt and possibly integrate a number of different portal infrastructures; this is being simplified by the Java Specification Request (JSR) 168 and Web Services Remote Portlets (WSRP) standards.