BEA announced the availability of BEA WebLogic Portal 10.2. This new release solidifies the mission- critical enterprise portal capabilities and introduces enhancements designed to build more dynamic and interactive experiences. Numerous improvements are focused on developer and end-user productivity including AJAX development, dynamic tools for modifying portal content and style and increased security capabilities. Additionally, BEA continues to innovate in the presentation layer architecture by adding support for Web 2.0 interactivity, portal federation, mashup, and composite application capabilities.

Combined with lifecycle management, these features and development capabilities in BEA WebLogic Portal are designed to help customers create personalized Web 2.0 applications delivered within a service-oriented ecosystem.

Alibris, the premiere online destination for new and used books, music, and movies, as well as rare and out-of-print titles, designed a portal primarily for consumers. The flexibility of BEA WebLogic Portal helped Alibris leverage a common portal framework to serve multiple audiences, including students, book collectors, and movie lovers.

"Each audience has different business requirements that pose unique technical challenges," said Michael Schaffer, chief technology officer at Alibris. "Our new portal infrastructure has helped us implement our aggressive growth strategy, supporting rapid development and deployment of new functionality and content. Using the BEA WebLogic Portal, we've created tailored sites for individual countries, broadened our product offerings, improved usability, and developed more sophisticated and creative marketing programs and campaigns."

Most technology initiatives in the enterprise use service-oriented architectures (SOA) to deliver adaptive business solutions by weaving together services and applications from existing software deployments. BEA WebLogic Portal is designed to integrate these SOA solutions visually and programmatically to create new capabilities, target new audiences, and reduce the cost of IT responsiveness. As the face of SOA, BEA WebLogic Portal is designed to deliver personalized experiences and create composites from applications, content, and services.

New capabilities in BEA WebLogic Portal 10.2 include:

• Mashups and migration
• Security
• Content Syndication
• Improved wizards
• Developer experience

Other significant advancements in BEA WebLogic Portal 10.2 include:

• Portal federation
• Publication
• Administration
• End-user-experience

BEA WebLogic Server provides the rock-solid Java Enterprise foundation for BEA WebLogic Portal and the most demanding application requirements. Additionally, BEA WebLogic Portal 10.2 integrates with a number of products from BEA such as BEA AquaLogic Analytics, BEA AquaLogic BPM, and BEA AquaLogic.NET Application Accelerator to meet modern business needs. With BEA WebLogic Mobility Server, it helps deliver portal content on thousands of mobile devices. Lastly, with BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services, it helps businesses quickly extend their sales channels through pre-integration with BEA WebLogic Portal 10.2. It also includes content management integration with the BEA WebLogic Portal so customers can be precisely targeted with product campaigns, as well as sample portlets to help enable customers to seamlessly navigate to the store front.

"BEA continues to lead the portal market with excellent growth and technological innovation," said Mark Carges, executive vice president at BEA Systems, Inc. "We are excited with the new release of BEA WebLogic Portal, as it offers our Java developers new capabilities for creating dynamic and modern portal applications, helping to bring the same vibrancy and dynamic experiences to their applications that Web 2.0 has brought to the consumer Internet."