News
Stellent Introduces Portlet for Websphere Portal
A heavyweight in the content management (CM) market hassigned on to IBM’s portlet program. Stellent Inc., now offers portlets to tieits CM system to Websphere Portal products.
Websphere Portal is a set of pure Java products thatallow enterprises to distribute business information via the Websphereapplication server. IBM offers independent software vendors opportunity tocreate “portlets”, connectors that easily integrate content from theirapplications into a Websphere portal.
“If you’re going to build a portal, this will get thecontent up there as fast as possible,” says Dan Ryan, senior vice president ofcorporate and business development at Stellent. He says the portlet offersbasic CM functionality for enterprises that want to move internal contentacross the enterprise.
While some CM products focus on managing Web content,Stellent’s business focuses primarily on moving information within theenterprise. Users can distribute a variety of file types, such as spreadsheets,presentations, and word-processing documents, which can be distributed in theiroriginal form or converted into a web-friendly filetype like HTML or PDF.
Stellent’s portlet lineup consists of five products formanaging content. Content Portlet is the component that allows end users toaccess business content from the Web. Contribution Portlet is the input systemfor moving files up to the portal. Search Portlet provides searchfunctionality, while Personal Searches Portlet creates a “greatest hits” ofsearches for individual users. Finally, Workflow Inbox Portlet offers a systemfor users who need to read and approve content.
Ryan believes Websphere Portal and Stellent tackle thechallenge of moving information through the enterprise to bring efficiency tothe enterprise. “A piece of the value is getting the right content to the rightdesktop securely,” he says.
IBM announced Websphere Portal back in October of lastyear. At that time a number of ISVs signed on to create portlets, includingStellent competitor Documentum Inc. and Citrix Systems, Inc. – Chris McConnell