1. Portal Anthony Colebourne Internet Services anthony.colebourne@manchester.ac.uk January 2006

2. Web Portals Site featuring a suite of commonly used services, serving as a starting point and frequent gateway to the Web. Personalised (login / customise / preferences) An aggregation of content and services Provides access to other services (Single Sign On) E.g –MyYahoo Portal –Google Personalised Home

3. Gateway Project To implement a university-wide portal for the new University of Manchester. Investigation Phase (late 2004 - late 2005) –Technical evaluation Portal Technologies Focus Group http://www.projectunity.man.ac.uk/is-programme/gateway/

4. Approach Self Build –Piecemeal built - collections of scripts –Software development project – well architected maintainable solution –Expensive –Not sustainable long term Complete, pre-integrated out-of-the-box portal solution –Vendor lockin –Quick wins –Bespoke customisation Framework solution –Fewer quick wins –Development effort –Sustainable –Better suited to a diverse devolved environment Framework approach was agreed to be most appropriate for Manchester

5. Portal Framework Enterprise quality Standards based –JSR 168 –WSRP System Integration & Consistency Single Sign-on & Security –Authentication –Authorization Personalization –User preferences –Profiles, structure, themes, skins User Interface –Themes, skins Component Reuse Internationalization Syndicated Content Subscription The uPortal Framework was recommended as most appropriate for Manchester

6. Web Project The Gateway Project has now merged with the University Web Project. The delivery of the portal will now take place as part of the Web Project. 3 developers Launch September 2006 Initial audience will be students

7. uPortal Open Source Developed for education, by education Build a community and share expertise across institutions –$700,000 Mellon Funding –University of Delaware administration –3 year project, completed 12/03 University contributors –Columbia, Yale, British Columbia, Delaware, Princeton, Cornell, Memorial Union of Newfoundland, Rutgers,… Contracted commercial developers –Instructional media and magic –UNICON UNICON Academus, Support and Consulting SCT Luminis ( 200+ sold) Over 200 production, 50 implementing 16 countries 5 commercial vendors Hundreds of thousands of users Large, small, k-12, government, commercial

10. JA-SIG – A Brief History Established in 1999, as “an independent organization designed to increase the flow of information between educational institutions and companies involved in the development of administrative applications using Java technology.” The first JA-SIG Conference was held in Orlando, Florida in 1999. Early discussions focused on a range of applications of Java. At a round-table discussion on portals, the seeds of the first major JA-SIG project – the open-source uPortal portal framework – were sown. An Andrew Mellon Foundation grant for uPortal development] Projects –uPortal –HyperContent –CAS JA-SIG is Community and Collaboration among Higher Ed institutions world-wide JA-SIG supports its community through knowledge sharing JA-SIG is Developers, Managers, Content Providers, Vendors JA-SIG sponsors Open Source projects JA-SIG partners with vendors and the extended community to foster new Open Source business models for higher ed JA-SIG, Inc. Incorporated as a non-profit organization in the State of New Jersey on Valentine’s Day, 2005 –Financial independence –Distributed fundraising –Protect our intellectual property –Slush /scholarship fund to seed projects or sponsor members –Ability to protect our community’s investments