WebSphere Portal 7 - Open Beta

IBM is working on the next release of WebSphere Portal and is gathering information from the community on how to improve the overall experience. If you have Portal or are considering using Portal, you might be interested in seeing what is coming in the new year with Portal :

• Enhanced theme support enables addition of blogs, library and wiki templates to portal pages using page builder
• Expanded virtualization support for VMWare and multiple profiles
• Page builder enhancements; catalog search, tab navigation widget, style and layout features, inline assembly
• Administration enhancements: xml based configuration of sub policies, People finder and person card enhancements
• Lotus Web Content Management enhancements including: Collaborative content management with Projects. Create, edit, preview and syndicate multiple changes together using a Project; publish in a single operation
• Lotus Web Content Management content authoring usability enhancements including favorites, localized authoring templates, folders, a new rich text editor, additional enhancements...
• Lotus Web Content Management enhanced ECM integration support
• Lotus Web Content Management support for WebSphere Application Server Resource Environment Provider, additional administration improvements

Please visit IBM WebSphere Portal and Lotus Web Content Management Beta Forum for additional enhancements and specific release details.

This is a significant version with far more features and changes in performance due to its native WebSphere Application Server 7 foundation. There is a significant focus on virtualization with this release and as such the Beta is available in VMWare vdisk format, which I am downloading as I write this.

I'll post in the coming weeks my feedback.