What is WebSphere Portal?

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.