Viador introduces portal framework
Viador is making it easier for IT organisations to build and extend corporate portals with new software it calls Viador E-Portal Framework.
The package, due to ship in the second quarter, is designed to help developers extend Viador's current portal suite to incorporate more e-business applications and Web data feeds, said Viador officials. "The architecture is evolving, and now you can embed all kinds of applications -- e-commernce and transaction systems," said Steve Dille, vice president of worldwide marketing. "It goes beyond just information access, which was the initial vision for portals."
Viador and other portal providers are eyeing a market that Meta Group, based on a survey of 350 global businesses, says is growing at a rapid clip. This month the research firm forecast that 85 percent of businesses will have portals in deployment or development by 2003, up from 35 percent today.
E-Portal Framework provides a PDK (portal development kit) that enables developers to create a "portlet" by wrapping code around an application or Web data feed so that it can be easily plugged into the framework.
The approximately 20 APIs in Viador's portal are opened for development, and a new E-Portal Pagebuilder provides for drag-and-drop construction, as opposed to the JavaScript coding required in the current release, Viador officials said.
The company will make available (free from its Web site) code-wrappers specific to Web calendaring organiser eCal, Web meeting provider WebEx and Effinity Online, which runs online charitable programs.
Scalability is enhanced with load balancing across multiple nodes, Viador officials said.
E-Portal Framework supports Windows NT, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Digital Unix and OS/390. Pricing begins at $35,000 (£21,700) per server.
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