IBM debuts new, entry-level portal server

IBM has introduced a new, low-end version of its WebSphere Portal that means users pay a dramatically lower price to get Web portals up and running.

With Version 6.0 of WebSphere Portal IBM is introducing a basic version called WebSphere Portal Server, which ships without Portal’s integrated content management and collaboration but provides all of its other tools, such as the WebSphere Portlet Factory run-time engine, software for running component applications.

Portal Server has two licensing options: a per-user option that starts at $2,500 for 20 user licenses, and a per-CPU option that starts at $50,000. In contrast, the other two versions of Portal - Portal Enable and Portal Extend - start at $95,000 and $130,000, respectively. Portal Enable offers document management; workflow that lets customers deploy composite applications to customers, partners and employees; and other features. Portal Extend has all the features of Portal Server and Portal Enable, plus collaboration features such as team-sharing and real-time communications. In previous versions of Portal, users had only CPU pricing and the Portal Enable and Portal Extend versions to choose from.

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IBM has introduced a new, low-end version of its WebSphere Portal that means users pay a dramatically lower price to get Web portals up and running.

With Version 6.0 of WebSphere Portal IBM is introducing a basic version called WebSphere Portal Server, which ships without Portal’s integrated content management and collaboration but provides all of its other tools, such as the WebSphere Portlet Factory run-time engine, software for running component applications.

Portal Server has two licensing options: a per-user option that starts at $2,500 for 20 user licenses, and a per-CPU option that starts at $50,000. In contrast, the other two versions of Portal - Portal Enable and Portal Extend - start at $95,000 and $130,000, respectively. Portal Enable offers document management; workflow that lets customers deploy composite applications to customers, partners and employees; and other features. Portal Extend has all the features of Portal Server and Portal Enable, plus collaboration features such as team-sharing and real-time communications. In previous versions of Portal, users had only CPU pricing and the Portal Enable and Portal Extend versions to choose from.

“From a product perspective it is a good move; there is still a very large opportunity base out there of customers interested in portal technology but not necessarily interested in buying a combination of portal, content management and collaboration in one gulp,” says David Gootzit, a research director at Gartner. “It will likely be an attractive solution for a lot of companies evaluating portal technology,” he says.

The pricing and packaging comes four months after IBM introduced Portal 6.0’s feature set, which supports Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (AJAX) and has a drag-and-drop, rapid-application-development environment, and templates to use in constructing applications and application components.

Portal Server includes Portlet Factory Designer, a development environment with templates to build connections to back-end systems, including those from Lotus Domino, SAP and Siebel. The tools provide an automated approach to creating, deploying and maintaining portlets based on a service-oriented architecture. IBM has a catalog of nearly 900 portlets, developed by IBM and its business partners.

Included in Portal 6.0 are standards-based applications using popular file formats to deliver Web content through RSS feeds; portlets, such as My Work to access Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes/Domino and Sametime Instant Messaging; My Vertical News, providing the top general, business and industry news headlines from MarketWatch; and People Finder, to locate employees quickly by name, current job or organizational context. The software also has a new workflow builder and a workflow engine built on the WebSphere Process Server and supporting the Business Process Execution Language. Portal 6.0 also integrates with the electronic forms capabilities of IBM Workplace Forms, and IBM has added a joint administrators’ console for managing the portal and content-management environments.