The uPortal Project 2001-2004
WINNER: 2007 EDUCAUSE Catalyst Award sponsored by SunGard Higher Education, An EDUCAUSE Platinum Partner.
“uPortal is the leading open-source enterprise portal framework built by and for the higher education community. uPortal continues to evolve through contributions from its global community and is supported by resources, grants, donations, and memberships fees from academic institutions, commercial affiliates, and non-profit foundations.”
“uPortal is built on open standards-based technologies such as Java and XML, and enables easy, standards-based integration with authentication and security infrastructures, single sign-on secure access, campus applications, web-based content, and end-user customization. It is one of the most widely deployed open-source enterprise portal frameworks, having been adopted by hundreds of institutions and the eResearch community worldwide.”
uPortal began as a joint project of the University of British Columbia and the high-tech firm Interactive Business Solutions (IBS) later acquired by Unicon Inc. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a two-year grant to complete the development of a new version of uPortal.
Because of their contributions IBS’ Ken Weiner became project manager and Peter Kharchenko became chief architect in August 2001 and continued through 2004. Michael Ivanov was the development lead from 2002 until 2006. He developed the complex algorithmns for presentation with emergency pre-emption and departmental priorities integrated with user preferences. im+m’s Justin Tilton contributed the XSLT presentation designs. During this period he also briefed U.S. and foreign government agencies, higher education associations, colleges and universities and standards bodies on the uPortal project.
im+m’s Jim Farmer was project administrator. He was responsible for coordinating activities, administration and support of the very-active Jasig Board.
uPortal won the EDUCAUSE Catalyst Award in 2007. After accepting the award Educause conference panel members, David W. Koehler, Cornell University, and William G. Thompson, Jr. of Unicon, Inc. told the story of the uPortal project, “a community effort to develop a free, sharable, enterprise-wide Web portal specifically for higher education. The flagship project for JA-SIG (the Java Applications Special Interest Group), uPortal has become the most widely used portal in production in higher education.”
WINNER: 2007 EDUCAUSE Catalyst Award. Award sponsored by SunGard Higher Education, An EDUCAUSE Platinum Partner.