Transcript Evaluating Portal Market for My UW

PeopleSoft vs Epicentric
Portal Engines
for My UW-Madison
Jack Duwe and Dirk Herr-Hoyman
University of Wisconsin-Madison
[email protected]
January 10, 2000
PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal
• New standalone product
• PS Student/Finance/HR applications will use it
• We studied the PS Portal for several weeks
– Visited the PS home office for a day
• Installed the first release the first day (Dec 15)
• Brought up key functional examples
• Developed a comparative analysis
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How did we get here?
• 1999 Portal Study
– Presented to JA-SIG
– Chose Epicentric infrastructure
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Apr, 2000: Constructed prototype
Aug, 2000: Released pilot to 500 students
Jan, 2001: Expand to 5,000 students
Mar, 2001: Expand to 20,000 students
Jun, 2001: Release to all students
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New Functions Planned for June
• Web registration (from PeopleSoft)
– to complement current Touch-Tone system
• Web email
• Web calendar (including campus events calendar)
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Why look at other frameworks?
• Generally satisfied with Epicentric
– Somewhat pricey, depending on configuration
• Not yet rolled out widely on campus
• PS offers potential of better integration with
administrative systems
• uPortal continues to be interesting
• UW-System considering portals at every campus
– Also System-wide license for Student and Finance
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UW-Madison Portal Evaluation
• Draft distributed at CSG
• Compares Epicentric, PeopleSoft, and
uPortal
• Interested in your feedback
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Gartner Portal Market Evalation
• Many vendors, noone is “there” yet
• Key criteria include
– Search across structured and unstructured
repository
– Taxonomy
– Content aggregation
– Personalization
– Application integration and development
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Epicentric experience in My UWMadison
• 12 months of use beginning Jan 2000
• See http://mymadison.wisc.edu
• Rapid deployment of live demo, helped in
campus discussions of MUM
• Started with dev/test/production and demo
environments
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Epicentric Positives
• No professional services help from Epicentric, we
did our own integration
• Complete control of look and feel
• Java, XML/XSL, RSS support
• Need to pay attention to standards
• LDAP interface using JNDI for authentication
• NT desktop for dev env, Solaris for test/prod
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Epicentric Positives con’t
• Web content aggregation, low hanging fruit
• Web admin interface
• Delegated admin, sub-portal (3.0)
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Epicentric Negatives
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Licensing cost
Had to build our own tabbed interface
Hard to move db data from dev to test to prod
Groups not dynamic, no ACLs
No SSO in product
No taxonomy
No messaging technology (could use JMS)
Hard techie questions not answered quickly
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Epicentric Negatives
• GoCampus saga: Do they care about the
higher ed market?
• Integration with PS apps
• Partnerships with any app vendors we use
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Epicentric derivatives
• GoCampus
– ASP portal
– Fizzled about April 00
• Blackboard
– A single tab only
– Not a partner, stuck on 2.x release
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PeopleSoft Portal demo of My
UW-Madison
• Rough, based on 5 days’ work by PS
• Shows examples of content aggregation
techniques
– Web
– Database
– PeopleTools
• LDAP authentication
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PS Portal Positives
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Integration to PS apps
Java servlet web server
SSO within product (domain cookie)
Taxonomy and search
Breadcrumbs
Integrated dev tools (PeopleTools)
Rule based roles (dynamic groups), Permission
lists (ACLs)
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PS Portal Negatives
• No sub-portal with delegated admin (tabs)
• Relies on PS technology for content
integration
• Does not directly support JSP/servlets for
customizations
• Integration with non-PS apps will pose
challenges
• Only basic XML support
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PS Portal Negatives
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PS messaging only, no JMS support
New product
PS bad reputation on campus
Timing for My UW-Madison
Wait and see attitude on standards
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uPortal Positives
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Higher ed focus
Licensing
Java
Open Source, not tied to any vendor
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uPortal Negatives
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Time to market, 1-2 years behind Epicentric
Long term support
No web aggregation
Just starting on groups and admin interface
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Summary Analysis
• Epicentric here today and portal framework
only product
• PS has many resources and fuller vision
• uPortal may look good in 2-3 years
• SSO and Groups/ACLs are key architectural
considerations
• 5-10 years before portal market has defined
standards and market leaders (if ever)
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