More on Version 7 of IBM’s Mobile Portal Accelerator

IBM has released the latest version of their mobile portal product.

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I had the chance to sit in on a session describing updates to the product.  Here are some notes on what’s in the upgrade:

1. The key value points comes from re-use of content across multiple form factors and from re-use of WebSphere Portal since the mobile accelerator sits on top of portal.
2. There are a number of product enhancements
   1. Completely revamped the way artifacts are packaged and deployed.  You can now deploy them as individual components rather than as part of the portal ear.  From a maintainability standpoint this is pretty big.
   2. The multi-channel server components are separate.  Loose coupling of these components and the portal is also great.
   3. New client framework for the multi-channel server (the server that figures out what form factor to use for the specific phone the end user has).  Supports rich internet widgets like block, slideshow, button styles, and carousels.
   4. Better monitoring and cache management
   5. Viewport optimization for IE mobile and Opera mobile browsers
   6. A brand new MPA image converter that correctly sizes images based on the form factor of the mobile device
   7. Enhanced Mobile Portal Toolkit running on RAD or RSA version 8
   8. New support for AIX, RHEL, SLES, Sun, and MS Windows Server 2008
3. Enhancements that make it easier to use and deploy
   1. Demo available at http://pec2010.com
   2. New IBM Redbook available about building with Mobile Portal Accelerator
   3. A lot of wiki content on cluster install, performance tuning, best practices, putting video into your site, etc.

Overall, I think it’s pretty impressive that just over a month after they release their main portal, you see the mobile accelerator out.  The enhancements fit a nice theme of maturation of the product by adding support for key functionality while giving more support for the product.