For all those departments willing to start a small portal project and then capitalize on their initial technology investment, IBM has introduced a new portal server. Called the WebSphere Portal Server, it acts as a software foundation for building applications and services residing within a portal. This offers simplification of creation and delivery of portal components by leveraging service oriented architecture. It leverages a Web 2.0 AJAX based interface which can help portal users in accomplishing more with less clicks and also improves portal performance. The server includes standards based applications which use popular file formats for delivering web content through RSS feeds.

The other features of WebSphere Portal Server are:

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- Easier integration with applications such as Oracle, SAP and BEA, based on IBM's open standards strategy.

-- Access to nearly 1,000 business partner applications available at IBM's Portal Catalog at: http://catalog.lotus.com/wps/portal/portal as well as popular collaboration portlets, including My Work, which provides access to Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes and IBM Lotus Domino business collaboration software and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and Sametime Instant Messaging; My Vertical News, which provides the top headlines from MarketWatch's array of general, business and industry news
categories; and People Finder, which provides a way to quickly locate employees based on name, current job or organizational context.

-- Advanced personalization and customization features, such as the use of new rules for business users to show or hide pages to help businesses improve team productivity. In addition, portal server offers new navigation tools with drag and drop capabilities to dynamically rearrange page layouts.

There are two options to purchase Portal Server. One is through purchasing twenty user packs for $2,500 or per processor basis for $50,000. IBM WebSphere Portal Enable is available for $95,000 per processor whereas IBM WebSphere Portal Extend is available for $130,000 per processor.