ATG (Art Technology Group) on Tuesday unveiled a portal platform that deploys task-oriented Java applets called "Gears" and works with the company's Dynamo e-business system.

In addition to the portal, called the ATG Enterprise Portal Suite, the company will release Dynamo e-Business Platform 5.5, a new version of the company's platform that adds support of multi-vendor Web application servers, such as IBM Corp.'s WebSphere. Also on tap is Gear Developer Network, which provides access to Gear applets from companies such as Netegrity Inc. and AltaVista Co.

ATG's portal suite enables development, deployment and management of portals for customers, partners and employees across an enterprise, said Peter Mahoney, senior director of product marketing at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based ATG. The product functions with the Gear applets.

"What the Gears do is provide a standard set of functions that can be easily configured to build a portal," Mahoney said. Tasks such as collaboration, document exchange, content management or searching can be done via Gears, he said.

The Gears can automate interaction between a portal application and an end user, said ATG's Thomas Carlin, director of product management for portals. A Gear, for example, could follow an event on the portal and create an appropriate alert for a sales person, Carlin said. Or, a Gear could publish a calendar for a specific user community within the portal, said Mahoney.

A beta user of the portal suite said the Gears allow for reusable vertical market applications.

"We've been developing a lot of vertical market solutions [and] we now have a reusable platform to plug them into, " said Thomas McFadyen, president of Vienna, Va.-based McFadyen Consulting, which builds CRM solutions on top of Dynamo.

Having out-of-box portal functionality "eliminates a lot of the customizations that previously have had to be done on application servers," McFadyen said. His company, for example, will be able to better offer an e-learning course as a product, via the portal.

ATG's Gear Developer Network features partners writing Gear applets for plugging into the portal. Some of these partners include: Netegrity, which has developed a Gear for functions such as single sign-on and security; Alta Vista, which will offer a Gear for searching and knowledge management; NewsEdge which has a Gear for syndicated content, and Tapkai, which has built a Web services applet.

Version 5.5 of Dynamo e-Business Platform, which features personalization and relationship management, adds support of Web application servers including BEA WebLogic, Hewlett-Packard's Netaction, iPlanet and IBM's WebSphere. Previously, the package only supported Dynamo's own application server. Dynamo offers functions such as the ability to track an e-business shopper who abandons a shopping cart and send them an e-mail invitation to return to the site, according to ATG.

Expanded support of Web application servers benefits customers who are standardizing on other servers besides ATG's, Mahoney said.

Other new functions in version 5.5 include business-to-business e-commerce relationship management and connectivity to CRM and enterprise resource planning applications from Siebel, PeopleSoft and Siebel, as well as to Lotus Notes. For example, a customer profile in Dynamo could be updated and then passed through to the Siebel system.

ATG's Enterprise Portal Suite and version 5.5 of the Dynamo e-Business Platform ship by September.

The suite costs US$105,000 per server CPU (central processing unit). For existing Dynamo e-business Platform customers, the product costs $50,000 per CPU as an upgrade. Dynamo e-Business Platform 5.5 costs $40,000 per CPU and is included in the portal suite.

» posted by abennett

InfoWorld.com

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