To simplify and standardize IT infrastructures, today’s businesses are deploying a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), an approach that uses service-oriented business modules that can be easily integrated, interchanged and re-used. With the advent of SOA, IT is now being viewed as a strategic component of the overall business strategy.

The WebSphere Consulting Portal (www.websphere-consulting.com) is an initiative to pool vital information for the growing WebSphere Community. Until now, anyone looking for details on software functionality, case studies and experienced service partners had to spend many tedious hours sifting through countless websites.

Fortunately, this is no longer the case. The WebSphere Consulting Portal provides a comprehensive overview of the entire IBM WebSphere portfolio, including detailed personal profiles of a number of leading portal professionals and selected cooperation partners. Using Plone technology, we’ve created a social network that centralizes valuable data and knowledge relevant to WebSphere services. To make searching for information easier for visitors, the site features user-friendly composite views of its content. A plan to include a common platform that will bring together service partners and customers for even the most advanced WebSphere services is currently in development.

  Larry Bowden Vice President of IBM for Portals and Web Interaction Services, had this to say about the WebSphere Consulting Portal:

“IBM and I wish to congratulate you for creating and going online with the WebSphere Consulting Portal. It truly is an “oasis” in the midst of the many WebSphere projects that, until now, required hours to search across the Internet for management overviews and case studies, as well as to access experienced people at service partners. We see your consulting portal as an excellent complement to IBM’s new Dashboard, Self-Service, Content, Collaboration, and Enterprise Suite Accelerators, which provide customers with interactive platforms for more effective and cost-efficient ways to access information, share ideas, communicate and work together. It is remarkable that you are able to pool all this much-needed data, knowledge and intelligence into a social network that provides such a complete and comprehensive overview of all aspects of the WebSphere product portfolio. Also, we are pleased that you have chosen to offer detailed personal profiles of leading portal professionals as well. This is a benefit that Project Managers are bound to appreciate greatly. We now look forward to the implementation of your plans to include a common platform for the WebSphere community that will bring together service partners and customers for even the most advanced WebSphere services. Keep up the good work!”

Plone was selected as the most appropriate platform for the WebSphere Consulting Portal because of its ease of use, robust features, customizability, compliance with standards, and superior performance.

Now online, the WebSphere Consulting Portal receives considerable traffic from search engines such as Google and generates significant demand for WebSphere products and resources.  With the WebSphere Consulting Portal, project developers can easily find the resources they need to improve productivity and make their enterprise project more successful — in just a fraction of the time.