ITJungle/Four Hundred Stuff: WebSphere Portal To Receive Content Management and Workflow Enhancements

April 12 2006

IT Jungle covers the recent announcement of WebSphere Portal 6.0, scheduled to ship in Q3 2006.

At the top of the list of enhancements is the integration of additional productivity tools, primarily content management and workflow. Other notable areas of improvement are to be found in ease of deployment and administration of the portal environment.

Essential to the implementation of portal technology in iSeries shops is the conversion of RPG or COBOL applications to composite applications. These newly created composite applications enable the integration of information from multiple applications, providing end users with content that specifically pertains to the users' roles and tasks. The interoperability of these applications and the increased efficiency of workers who access them are at the heart of any portal project. As IBM has developed the WebSphere Portal products, functionality related to workflows has been a priority. In Portal 6.0 IBM has concentrated on templates and content management capabilities.
and some statistics about the market momentum for WebSphere Portal:
According to statistics IBM included in a press release, every year since its portal software was introduced in 2001, there has been year-to-year double-digit growth in Big Blue's portal business. By its own reckoning there are now more than 3,600 customers deploying its WebSphere Portal software. It also makes note of a growing ecosystem that now totals 150 business partners with a total of 440 portal-related product offerings. There are also 64 partners that have a total of 153 iSeries solutions currently in the Portal catalog.
Link: ITJungle/Four Hundred Stuff: WebSphere Portal To Receive Content Management and Workflow Enhancements >

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  IBM Workplace  Add/View Comments [20]

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  1. 1  Mike "5 Things Wrong With SharePoint" Drips http://forevervoyaging.blogger.com | 4/12/2006 5:41:36 PM

    Oh fine! Now all the Microsoft SharePoint Portal customers will be standing around whining because big bully IBM actually will be shipping useful timely enhancements to WebSphere Portal in 2006. Maybe Microsoft will actually ship the next SharePoint Portal Server in 2007, but I personally wouldn't place any bets on their team's ability to smoothly incorporate Microsoft Content Management Server into the product.

    Of course Microsoft is To This Day puzzled as to why their Content Management Server wasn't a runaway hit at only $42000 per server license. In addition to attempting to lump SharePoint and Content Manager into one package, they are also tossing in the third stooge, Commerce Server in what can only be perceived as an attempt at market dominance only rivaled by Pinky's for world dominance.

    This is the kind of stumbling and fumbling that keeps me employed in the consulting business. Microsoft! God love their Helen Keller-like clarity of marketing vision!

  1. 2  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 4/12/2006 8:18:24 PM

    A sincere question, if Websphere Portal is doing all this stuff, what is the need for Workplace Portal?

  1. 3  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 4/12/2006 10:18:00 PM

    @2 "Workplace Portal"? What's that?

  1. 4  Axel  | 4/13/2006 12:19:45 AM

    Good news.

    Though I do currently prefer a different jsr168 based product, its fine to see competing products grow to make stronger the platform.

    Thank you, IBM

  1. 5  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 4/13/2006 5:19:03 AM

    <blockquote>"Workplace Portal"? What's that?</blockquote>

    An exercise in IBM branding. It fools longtime partners. Everybody else couldn't care less.

  1. 6  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 4/13/2006 7:36:07 AM

    But there is no IBM product called "Workplace Portal". That was my point. I understand the confusion beteen the various product names and brands, but I wanted to get at what Carl might be referring to.

  1. 7  Patrix  | 4/13/2006 7:47:11 AM

    @2: Here you go buddy

    { Link }

    Google gives you about ninety thousand hits, and IBM employee Brill does not know what it is...

    I know you are joking Ed, but does not that kinda makes you think about branding issues?

    I agree completely with @5

    Happy easter /Patrix

  1. 8  Patrix  | 4/13/2006 7:54:52 AM

    @7: Correction: I assumed Ed was joking. Apparently that was wrong

  1. 9  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 4/13/2006 8:54:46 AM

    I had thought, and it sounds like incorrectly, that the Workpalce products were running in Workplace Portal. Which is based on Websphere portal, but was not the same as Websphere portal.

  1. 10  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 4/13/2006 10:05:08 AM

    @7 / @8 no I'm not joking. There is no product called "Workplace Portal". Your google search is a red herring -- it is finding places where the words are in sequence..."Workplace, Portal..." etc.

    Carl, some of the Workplace products are running on WebSphere Portal as a foundation layer. I don't know of a different thing from WebSphere Portal itself. Is there someplace where we've said otherwise?

  1. 11  Patrix  | 4/13/2006 10:52:12 AM

    @10: To be honest I did not bother to check the hits and I am not very familiar with Websphere/Workplace. I assumed again by the number of hits on the exact wording.

    Many IBM product names change every season and again I agree with @5. One of my personal favourites (aside Sametime/Someting of course) is

    "Rational Web Developer for WebSphere Software" aka "Websphere Application Developer" aka "Visual Age" (I probably did not get all of the right either)

    Nothing personal, and IBM makes some great products. But the branding/naming could really be a bit more static, short and concise if you asked me.

    Curious: Has there been an IBM product named this before? The goggle cache seem to suggest so when I skimmed the hits:

    { Link }

    /Patrix

  1. 12  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 4/13/2006 11:10:24 AM

    That is a catalog entry from a third-party business partner, not IBM (even though the catalog itself is hosted on an IBM website)..and I suspect the reason it's in cache is that they've since corrrected it.

  1. 13  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 4/13/2006 12:31:07 PM

    Some emails I received from the partnerworld ISV team are signed:

    IBM Workplace Portal & Collaboration Channels Development Team

    and other emails from IBMers have been signed

    IBM Software Group

    Workplace Portal and Collaboration Software

  1. 14  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 4/13/2006 12:37:39 PM

    so sue them for grammar...the IBM name for the division that includes Lotus is "Workplace, Portal & Collaboration". So it really needs a comma.

  1. 15  Patrix  | 4/13/2006 12:40:37 PM

    Perhaps someone should enlighten this firm then that the product they write about does not exist

    { Link }

    (Open the PDF. First page)

  1. 16  Carl Tyler http://www.iminstant.com | 4/13/2006 12:41:16 PM

    I accept there is no Workplace Portal, but I'm not the first to think there was.

    "...The IBM On Demand Workplace portal provides a single point of access to back-end applications and content in a personalized and customized manner..."

    { Link }

  1. 17  Bob http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 4/13/2006 12:43:48 PM

    The Workplace brand began with Workplace Messaging 1.0 and has expanded to include lots of other things including Notes/Domino. The really confusing part is that the WebSphere brand name is applied to Portal but Portal includes components with the Workplace name. For example, from the article: "WebSphere Portal 6.0 also includes IBM Workplace Web Content Management Version 6.0, the most current version of that product".

    The layering that Carl asks about in @9 is that Workplace Collaborative Services is layered on top of a specificl version of WebSphere Portal (which is layered on top of a specific version of WebSphere App Server).

  1. 18  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 4/13/2006 1:28:39 PM

    @16 again, Carl, that is not "Workplace Portal"... the article is about creating an "On Demand Workplace" (TM) which includes building a portal.

  1. 19  De Rehsif  | 4/13/2006 11:29:32 PM

    Ed, you know very well what the "root cause" of the above is all about. Own up to the confusion and move on. Everyone's right, and it all doesn't matter.

    Now - do screenshots of WEBSPHERE PORTALS new features exist...?

  1. 20  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 4/14/2006 6:19:42 PM

    The launch webpage is at { Link }