WebSphere Portal is a framework--including a runtime server, services, tools, and many other features--that you can use to integrate your enterprise into a single, customizable interface called a portal. An enterprise portal combines components, applications, processes, and content from a wide variety of sources into a unified presentation, which your users can access from a wide variety of devices.

You can customize the portal based on user or job roles, security needs, device settings, personal preferences, and administrative settings. You can also define workflows to support your business processes. You can manage your portal's content using IBM's Web Content Management, which is integrated with WebSphere Portal. Figure 1 shows an example company portal.

Figure 1. A company portal

While WebSphere Portal binds your work environment into a cohesive interface, it also provides services to enhance the user experience so that the unified interface is much richer than if you were using the individual components.

For example, it provides single sign-on services so that, once users are logged into your portal, they can access all the underlying applications without having to re-enter user credentials (such as userids and passwords). You can plug in the look-and-feel for your portal's pages using customizable themes. Using the collaboration services API, you can enable users to easily engage peers to expedite work processes. Using cooperative portlets, applications can exchange information, either automatically or with user control. These are just a few examples of the ways you can easily extend your portal environment and optimize your users' experience with it.

WebSphere Portal is a core part of IBM Workplace. Numerous other related products, including WebSphere Voice and the WebSphere Everyplace products, work with WebSphere Portal to enable users to access applications running on virtually any operating system. Users can access the portal from all types of devices, such as Web browsers, rich clients, mobile phones, and PDAs.

You use WebSphere Portal to build and deploy a composite application, called a portal. Through the portal, you can provide business applications, content, workflow, and people awareness to your customers, employees, business partners, trading partners, and suppliers. You can customize or personalize the interface to fit each audience segment, or individual users. You can make this portal an effective, collaborative work area for all your users.

You can use its many services, tools, and add-ons to continually extend the functionality of your portal. For example, you can integrate content from other Web sites and enterprise applications, using portlets which are included with the product installation (called "out-of-the-box portlets"). You can publish portlets as remote Web services and integrate remote portlets into your portal. Having such a comprehensive, manageable work environment can reduce your overall costs, and give your business a competitive edge.

New with Version 6, you can create application templates and then let your business users quickly assemble feature-rich, composite applications from those templates. For more information on this new capability see Building composite applications and templates in WebSphere Portal V6.

The way you work with WebSphere Portal depends upon your role. You might use WebSphere Portal directly, or other tools that work with WebSphere Portal.

• Portal developers build the overall portal structure, comprised of pages which can have customized themes. They are usually Java developers who often work with user interface designers and the portal administrator.

• Portlet developers create portlets which comprise the various sections of portal pages.

  Portal and portlet developers often use Rational Application Developer V6, which includes the Portal Tools. They can also download hundreds of portlets and tools from the WebSphere Portal catalog.

  You will also probably want to install one of the WebSphere Portal product editions on your preferred platform. If you are developing applications for wireless devices or voice portlets, you might also use one or more of the WebSphere Everyplace or WebSphere Voice products.

• The portal administrator manages user access and security for the portal. He or she uses the WebSphere Portal administrative interfaces, which includes a portal, some of the out-of-the-box portlets, and programmable utilities.

  The administrator also works with WebSphere Application Server, and, optionally, other related products including a database manger such as DB2, an LDAP server such as IBM Directory Server, and a security manager such as Tivoli Access Manager.

• Starting with WebSphere Portal V6, business users can assemble their own business applications based on templates that have been created by application designers using components created by Java developers.

  For more information on this new capability and how WebSphere Portal opens new opportunities for many types of users, see Building composite applications and templates in WebSphere Portal V6.

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WebSphere Portal contributes to an SOA environment on several levels. First, it provides a unified interface, to potentially disparate components, applications, and systems; therefore, it is the front-end to your SOA environment. It provides this interface through industry standard mechanisms such as the JSR 168 Portlet API, JSR 170 Content Repository for Java Technology API, and Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP). For an introduction to using WSRP, see Configuring Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) in WebSphere Portal. To learn how to create industry standard portlets, see Creating a JSR 168 portlet for use by diverse portals.

WebSphere Portal's new application framework enables business users to easily assemble and customize applications and process components into composite applications; this capability provides another way to help your SOA strategy. You can use application templates to delegate customizations to more users, to incorporate workflow, and to support policy-based provisioning and workflow operations, without programming.

On a logistics level, WebSphere Portal runs in an SOA environment as a Web application on IBM WebSphere Application Server, and adds to its extensive set of services. It works with the WebSphere Process Server so you can support your business processes through a sophisticated portal interface. Your portals (which are composite Web applications) can access these services through standards-based APIs. And, you can access content, data, and applications on a wide variety of servers using portlets, builders, and tools from the WebSphere Portal catalog. Figure 2 shows a high level view of the WebSphere Portal architecture.

Figure 2. WebSphere Portal provides many services for all types of portals

WebSphere Portal integrates with the entire range of the WebSphere environment, and with other open systems. It provides the industry's most comprehensive portal framework. See also New to WebSphere and SOA.

The system requirements for your portal environment depend upon which of the products you select. The WebSphere Portal product family includes the following products. See the specific product for its system requirements.

• WebSphere Portal for Multiplatforms, which is the base edition of WebSphere Portal. It helps you quickly build scalable portals to simplify and accelerate access to personalized information and applications. The Enable edition runs on Windows 2000/2003, Linux (SuSe, Red Hat, z/Linux), AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX. The Extend edition runs on Windows 2000/2003, Linux (SuSe, Red Hat, z/Linux), AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX.

• WebSphere Portal Express, which enables small and mid-size businesses, as well as departments within larger companies, to more easily deploy sophisticated employee, business partner, and customer portals. It comes in two editions: Express and Express Plus. The Express Plus edition includes collaboration capabilities that help teams work together more effectively. Both the Express and Express Plus editions run on Windows 2000/2003, and Linux/Intel (SuSe, Red Hat).

  Download a trial copy of WebSphere Portal Express from developerWorks and you can try out most of the WebSphere Portal capabilities.

• WebSphere Portal Enable for z/OS, which provides the basic portal framework for integrating the portal with applications and data sources, on z/OS and OS/390.

• WebSphere Everyplace Mobile Portal Enable, which enables users of a wide range of mobile devices, such as cell phones and PDAs, to access your portal.

• WebSphere Portlet Factory, which provides tools to help you quickly create, customize, deploy, and maintain portlets.

For more information, and to see additional WebSphere Portal offerings, see the WebSphere Portal product family.

For specific requirements for each product edition, see the product InfoCenter, available from WebSphere Portal product documentation.

The WebSphere Portal zone on developerWorks can help you get started with WebSphere Portal. After you have mastered the basics, you can access resources to help you make enhancements to your basic portal implementation. The zone includes in-depth technical resources to help you develop sophisticated portals, get technical support, interact with other portal and portlet developers, and learn how to become certified in WebSphere Portal.

Download a trial copy of Rational Application Developer from developerWorks. You can use the portal tools to develop portlets and a test runtime copy of WebSphere Portal to develop a portal prototype.

Download a trial copy of WebSphere Portal Express from developerWorks. Experiment with the collaboration, document management, Web content management, presence awareness, and instant messaging capabilities in this edition of WebSphere Portal.

Pick from these learning sources on the WebSphere Portal zone to fit your learning style:

• What's new in WebSphere Portal V6 describes all the cool, new features in the latest release.
• Guide to WebSphere Portal provides an overview of portal concepts.
• Portlet Development Workbook helps you to get started with portlet development using the Java™ Standard Portlet API (JSR 168).
• WebSphere Portal product documentation gives direct access to the most current versions of all the product manuals, for all editions and releases, and in all support country languages.
• Tutorials lists free, downloadable guided instruction through common portal-related tasks.
• WebSphere Portal courses lists classes in a variety of formats from free e-learning opportunities to traditional, instructor-led courses.
• Redbooks are available on portal-related topics.
• WebSphere Portal catalog gives you access to hundreds of portlets and tools that you can download and use with your portal.
• Read in-depth technical articles, written by consultants, customers, partners, and developers, in our library and WebSphere Technical Journal. Many include inline or attached sample code.

These are just some of the many technical resources you can get from the ever-growing collection in the WebSphere Portal zone.