It does this all without requiring J2EE development expertise, and without developers needing to implement and learn application and Portal APIs by automating portlet development with reusable wizard-like Builders in the WebSphere Portlet Factory Designer. This automation is designed to speed custom portlet development by up to 12X with existing IT resources, which not only reduces development time/cost, but accelerates portal deployment for incremental ROI.

In addition to speeding initial portlet development, WebSphere Portlet Factory allows the reuse of existing portlets - without additional coding – to help meet the varied needs of the enterprise without additional IT burden. With a feature called “Profiling”, developers can quickly and easily create multiple, highly customized applications from one portlet code base, all without requiring additional code changes, redeployment of files, or publishing of HTML and JSP. Thus, with WebSphere Portlet Factory, you can create adaptive, role-driven applications that change on demand. Without profiling, you need to maintain multiple versions of your (portlet) applications or write conditional logic to achieve the same effect.

With WebSphere Portlet Factory, you can further increase the ROI of your portal initiatives by utilizing its rich portlet creation and customization features to build adaptive, robust portlets in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost. Delivering native integration with WebSphere Portal, it supports the key WebSphere Portal-specific features, including:

• People Awareness - Seamlessly integrate collaboration into your portal, enabling users to send instant messages and e-mail simply by clicking on a person's name.
• Credential Vault - Easily leverage the WebSphere Portal Credential Vault or LTPA tokens to provide single sign-on capabilities
• Click-to-Action - Create a richly integrated portal experience by enabling portlets to interact and share relevant information, even if they are accessing data from disparate databases and systems.
• Automated Deployments - Automatically deploy and redeploy portlet WAR files to WebSphere Portal - without having to touch ANT scripts or XML deployment descriptors.
• WebSphere Portal Groups - Easily deploy portlets that adapt depending on the user's portal group.
• WebSphere Portal Modes - Automatically generate fully functioning user interfaces for each of the portlet modes, including view, edit, and configure.
• Process Choreographer - Create portlets that integrate business processes defined in BPEL.

With WebSphere Portlet Factory and WebSphere Portal, your developers of all skill levels can rapidly create high-value, customized portlets that natively integrate with WebSphere Portal. The net result is faster time to deployment, lower development costs, and increased user retention and satisfaction.