IBM Announces Web 2.0 Enterprise Portal Software

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced that its new portal software with Web 2.0 support will ship this quarter. IBM WebSphere Portal 6.1 is designed to securely combine information from both the enterprise and the Web. The expanded Web 2.0 features of IBM WebSphere Portal 6.1 software is intended to help people be more productive and find information faster. Its new live text tagging feature allows a user to click on text, in context of the business process being used, and see supporting information right there related to the job at hand. IBM's new software also has the ability to instantly update any aspect of a web page without the need to do an entire page refresh, for example, when a person makes an update while placing an on-line order. IBM also announced that three of its accelerators and the beta version of a new entry-level forms product will ship this quarter. The first two accelerators are designed to help users respond more quickly to new business opportunities. IBM Dashboard Accelerator 6.1 for WebSphere Portal will integrate business intelligence software from IBM-Cognos and several other companies. IBM Dashboard Accelerator is used for rapidly building a dashboard. The second, IBM Content Accelerator 6.1 for WebSphere Portal, includes simplified authoring templates used for creating quick content like blogs. It also will have richer in-line editing to enable users to easily create folders, sites or site areas. The third, IBM Business Process Accelerator, which has just started shipping, is designed to simplify and improve the adoption of business processes by using the role-based, personalized user interface of WebSphere Portal to improve both implementation and user response time for a range of processes. Lastly, IBM announced today that the company's current forms product, IBM Lotus Forms 3.0.1, now includes out-of-the-box integration with IBM Filenet F8 software. http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus