IBM's continuing enhancements to the WebSphere Portal are very relevant to the direction of merging Domino and WebSphere application development along J2EE lines. Over the past few years , the Lotus range of products has expanded to embrace technologies such as instant messaging or chat. IBM has recognized that these new technologies of presence offer the possibility of incremental collaboration. Use of the WebSphere Portal can be the payoff. It incorporates the Lotus-derived Collaboration Center, which offers "portlets"integrated with Lotus technology for messaging and team workplaces. Placing parts of Lotus collaboration under the WebSphere umbrella will help enhance the scalability of Lotus Collaboration for the large enterprise. In addition, the Portal strategy is a good way to allow IBM and Lotus to introduce the WebSphere community to the joys of collaboration.
The move is also significant because of what it says about IBM's portal strategy. Some analysts divide portal servers into application portal suites (APS) and smart enterprise suites (SES). An APS is essentially an application server with limited collaborative facilities, and an SES is a high- powered collaborative workspace unattached to any specific application. With the enhancements to WebSphere Portal, IBM is moving in the direction of an APS/SES hybrid, adding industrial-strength collaboration and workflow facilities to the tried-and- tested WebSphere application-based setup.
With Lotus embracing DB2 and J2EE, much of the communication the Lotus and WebSphere communities has been one way. Now with WebSphere embracing collaborative techniques, the communication is becoming "two way."
