Biggest surprise to me so far -- WebSphere Portal Express 6.0

January 23 2007

It got but a scant few minutes in yesterday's keynote, but it's become a fair bit of buzz.  The WebSphere Portal Express 6.0 announcement has captured a bunch of attention, including a sold out breakout session earlier today.  Perhaps part of the reason is because it shows that IBM continues to focus on the SMB market, including a whole new section of the website: ibm.com/lotus/smb.    There's a great little 9 minute video on that site called "Business on the Rise", and my colleagues in the SMB team have been pretty jazzed all day about all this stuff.  Nice work by Steve, Bethann, and the team.

Ed Brill | Lotusphere2007 Category:  Lotusphere2007  Add/View Comments [19]

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  1. 1  Greg Browne http://www.haydonend.co.uk | 1/23/2007 4:17:25 PM

    It seems unlikely to me that I will ever persuade any of my small businesses to migrate to these Lotus products. If stumacs blog { Link } is anything to go by, the complexity and the learning curve are just too great for them to take time out of running the business to learn something new, no matter how good it is.

  1. 2  GarryL  | 1/23/2007 4:30:14 PM

    Greg,

    Exactly which products are you refering too?

  1. 3  GarryL  | 1/23/2007 4:51:31 PM

    Oh, can I just say generally that I have been floored by some of the announcements on on the opening day.

    Lotus gets cool again. And about f'king time.

  1. 4  Kurt B http://www.onthehoist.com | 1/23/2007 5:50:35 PM

    As I watched the opening session I couldn't help but wonder what will happen to WSE now that this product is out. They seem pretty similar in scope.

  1. 5  Randy Shimizu  | 1/23/2007 10:08:09 PM

    This certainly seems like a step in the right direction. But I thought that WSE (Websphere Services Express) was for SMB.

    Until IBM redefines it's definition and vision of the SMB market they will be at a market disadvantage to MS and other players. The fact remains that Dot Net Nuke and Sharepoint services have a ease of implentation that WPS has problems competing with despite their limitations.

  1. 6  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 1/23/2007 10:13:47 PM

    I couldn't find anything that lists the differences between Portal and Portal Express. Why would I want one over the other? If the "express" pricing is $40K per CPU, or $115 per user, I can only imagine what the costs for the full thing are. Both are out of our price range.

  1. 7  Flemming Riis  | 1/23/2007 10:18:16 PM

    -I couldn't help but wonder what will happen to WSE now that this product is out.

    there is a swap of licenses from WSE to portal express as 1-1 from what i heard at the presentation , and there will be made tools avaliable to update from WSE so my guess would be that WSE is dead.

  1. 8  Randy Shimizu  | 1/23/2007 11:22:52 PM

    I believe IBM is trying re-brand the WPS express. One problem with WSE name is that there is no contextuality in the name. Unless some is familiar with the product they would have no idea what it does.

    The other I believe is to shift the emphasis away from Workplace. Although Workplace is a function in WSE the main function is a portal.

    I have always believed that IBM brought Workplace to soon. The problem was that Workplace was a immature product and confused customers. I was very disappointed that IBM annnounced Workplace client and then restricted access through the project office.

  1. 9  Kurt B http://www.onthehoist.com | 1/24/2007 12:12:46 AM

    ^^ Thanks folks. That's what I figured. Hey, as long as there's a way forward right?

    /WSE customer

  1. 10  Axel Janssen  | 1/24/2007 4:47:14 AM

    JSR-168 Portals like Websphere Portal are yet quite new and the Ajax thing puts a little bit of new dynamics in the whole thing.

    Easier to install products are a good indicator that dust tends to settle. And the vision to use the product by organizations with real people and budget constraints gets clearer, simpler to grasp & communicate.

  1. 11  Greg Browne  | 1/24/2007 11:24:39 AM

    GaryL.

    I don't use Lotus software but can see that it is just what a growing business needs, however Lotus seem to make it clear that they are aiming at the business of less than 1,000 people. Who is looking at the < 100 people business? Many of these businesses have grown from a 2 people business are beginning to find expansion difficult within cash flow constraints and are still using packages like Excel for data, shared on peer to peer networks or worse, use Outlook/OE) for communication and don't know how to move forward. If a Lotus salesman came in and said that they need.

    Shared team workspaces

    Collaborative document management

    Secure IM

    an Integrated portal which could all be provided in one easy to install solution

    they would agree, to some extent, but would balk at the cost, until disaster forced them to either go under or accept the cost.

    Secure mobile access, group calendars, web conferencing, shared team workspaces can all come at a later date.

    My point is. How to you migrate the very small business towards Lotus solutions? They might well provide your largest future area of growth, if only you can get them on the first step, maybe by just providing better email to start with and improved data handling?

  1. 12  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 1/24/2007 2:12:12 PM

    @11 - For everything you mention the user just needs a Domino Server express license. It includes application templates for Teamrooms and document libraries (Quickr just makes that better) and it includes entitlement for Sametime Limited Use. And then there is the excellent open source projects available on OpenNTF, such as PeanutsPortal, which gives you a Notes and web portal that's 100% Domino.

    We're a 200 user shop, and despite my seemingly endless complaining about all things Notes and Domino, we do get a lot of value out of our Notes and Domino investment. Since it's mostly built on open standards you can extend it however you want, too.

  1. 13  Rock http://www.lotusgeek.com | 1/24/2007 3:31:01 PM

    Charles hit the nail on the head. Domino Server Express is the perfect fit for shops that are VSB - it does everything you mention and so much more. And the nice thing about Domino is that it is more than capable of scaling as your business scales - and it integrates nicely with the more robust products in the IBM portfolio as your business (hopefully) grows into that need.

    DISCLAIMER: I am a Lotus employee; however I am in product development, not sales. Additionally I was a business partner for 10+ years, so I tend to think more along those lines ;)

    --Rock

  1. 14  Henning Heinz  | 1/24/2007 3:47:20 PM

    Express does not include anonymous http access, at least if you do not want to buy an Utility server express. Having a look at the price list the Utility server has become cheaper (at least I had something else in my mind than about 2500$).

  1. 15  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 1/24/2007 4:17:39 PM

    I realize there is a lot Express doesn't include, I didn't intend to present it like it was just a lower-cost license. There is a Notes and Domino licensing page that does a pretty good job of spelling this out.

  1. 16  Robert Wenc  | 1/24/2007 4:33:07 PM

    I've done a fair amount of work on Portal 6 and I must say that IBM has released a nice product in v6 (compared to previous versions). This Portal Express 6 will pretty much open the door for SMBs to adopt it along-side their Domino environments. To me, it seems like all of this will really come together once Notes8 is released and you can create those composite apps. Since Notes8 can render portlets natively, you'll need a portal server - like WPS Express6 to serve them up.

  1. 17  Paul Derby https://www.yugma.com | 1/24/2007 11:52:05 PM

    Regarding #11 above... I agree with you. On the flip sidem here is a nice example of good things available for smaller businesses Check out the new Yugma FREE web conferencing and desktop sharing app. It's the best value I’ve seen to date! (see https://www.yugma.com) It’s a super easy to use real-time collaboration service that allows you to invite up to 10 other people into your web session for free — forever!!! Works on both Mac and Windows. I highly recommend. You just can’t beat the value.

  1. 18  Greg Browne  | 1/25/2007 3:33:29 AM

    #12-17. Thanks for your valuable comments. I can see I have some homework to do but I do now feel better prepared to explore.

  1. 19  Visitor  | 8/20/2007 6:56:10 AM

    What's the difference between WebSphere Portal Express 6.0 and WebSphere Portal ???