Portlet Factory Added to IBM WebSphere Portal Express

January 15, 2008 Alex Woodie

IBM last week announced it has added the WebSphere Portlet Factory to WebSphere Portal Express version 6.0, which shipped in February 2007. The move gives IBM customers another reason to buy WebSphere Portal Express, which runs natively on i5/OS, and should make it easier for customers to develop customized, JSR-168 compliant portlets for use in their company Web portals.

The WebSphere Portlet Factory, which IBM obtained with its acquisition of Bowstreet a little over a year ago, is a Windows-based tool designed to simplify the development of J2EE portlet applications and eliminate the need for direct coding. Instead of requiring a programmer to design a portlet, analysts with less sophisticated training use the software to customize existing portlet templates, thereby speeding development time and saving money.

And now that WebSphere Portlet Factory is shipped as a component of WebSphere Portal Express, companies can save even more money on the development and maintenance of their Web portals.

WebSphere Portal Express version 6.0 runs on Windows, Linux, and i5/OS V5R3 and V5R4. The integration of WebSphere Portlet Factory with WebSphere Portal Express will be available on January 22.