Exclusive report on open source portals

7
Lukasz Wilczynski writes “GridwiseTech, a vendor-independent Grid computing expert, released an exclusive report on Grid-Compliant Open Source Portals, available for free download on the website www.gridwisetech.com/portals. The report is an outline of the complete research and software testing of the leading solutions in the field: GridSphere, Liferay and uPortal. It is addressed to technology investigators from business sector, who are in the process of selecting portal technologies suitable for their specific needs.

The web-based user interface became the most popular way of managing remote access to specialized applications as well as extensive amounts of data, e.g. in medical, engineering or financial field. It has several significant advantages, most notably the minimal technology requirements on the client side, enabling users with no IT knowledge to quickly and efficiently perform various tasks, e.g. pricing and reporting. Other strong points of a Grid portal approach are: the ease of software maintenance, its remote accessibility and the relatively simple development and deployment process, as opposed to the case when desktop clients are used.

GridwiseTech‘s experts presented the aforementioned portal frameworks in an objective fashion. All three solutions had been carefully researched and highlighted according to their strong and weak points. Technical areas such as security, management, configuration, JSR-168 standard, look and feel, and developer toolkit have been covered in detail.

„Our intention as a vendor-indepenedent expert was to offer an objective presentation rather than rank the solutions against one another” – said GridwiseTech‘s president, Pawel Plaszczak. „Eventually, the decision on the optimal product highly depends on customer’s particular requirements. We assist customers in these challenging decisions as well as in follow-on development and integration work. Our mission is to turn avant-garde technology into complete solutions for customers”.

Additional advice on portal development design can be obtained from GridwiseTech on request, by writing to contact[AT]gridwisetech.com. Vendors interested in adding or updating information on their product are also invited to contact GridwiseTech.”