SitefinderOracle and Sun
Secure Search

Active Tab Press Room

Sun Microsystems and Liferay Launch Initiative to Develop Next-Generation Web Technologies

GlassFish and Liferay Communities to Collaborate on New Offerings

SAN FRANCISCO, CA JAVAONE CONFERENCE, May 7, 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) and the OpenPortal community today announced a new open source initiative with Liferay, Inc. to develop a common Web presentation platform that incorporates portal and integration technologies from both companies. Developers will now have access to a new, stable, standards-based Web presentation platform. The Sun and Liferay products resulting from this initiative will bring developers simple, lightweight presentation capabilities for GlassFish, Sun's open source Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) application server. Free downloads are available at http://www.glassfish.org/portal.

Sun and Liferay also plan to separately market and sell products and services based on the commonly developed open source platform, offering customers additional functionality and more choice depending on features and level of support needed. Sun is also announcing the preview release of a lightweight platform for simplifying Web site development and building collaborative work spaces. Sun's new platform also allows Web developers to incorporate role-based access to content and applications, adding an extra layer of security and control to their portals.

"The GlassFish community continues to grow and demand open source, enterprise-class solutions. Our association with Liferay and its great platform is an example of multiple communities and partners working together to deliver on the Java software community’s requests," said Mark Herring, vice president of marketing, Software Infrastructure, Sun Microsystems. "As Sun's involvement in open source expands, customers and developers can expect to see new models of collaboration within open source software communities in an effort to drive adoption of interesting technologies."

Sun's new platform will provide customers and Web developers with the following features:

  • Multi-language support - Integrates Ruby, PHP or Java technology into a single pageview.
  • Widget syndication - Easily syndicates widgets using REST technologies. For example, an end user will be able to easily incorporate a hosted widget, such as flight schedules or weather reports, into a Web page with a simple point and click.
  • Workflow API - Builds human workflow applications using standards.
  • Simplification of page development and maintenance in Web-oriented architectures -- Leverages widgets and gadgets from multiple language types.
  • Flexibility of licenses - Sun distributions will be available under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) and the Liferay distributions will be available under the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) license.

"Liferay is one of the most mature and active open source communities for portal and Web presentation technologies with more than 50,000 downloads per month and more than 8,000 registered users," said Brian Chan, creator and chief software architect, Liferay. "While we will continue to support all major servlet containers, we've seen a big increase in demand for Liferay Portal running on GlassFish - growing from one to 15 percent of our downloads -- and we saw this as a great opportunity to work with Sun's GlassFish and OpenPortal communities to offer enterprises more choices, flexibility and greater access to the latest technologies."

The Liferay community is leveraging the open source Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) and Portlet Container (JSR 286 - portlet specification 2.0) implementations from the Sun sponsored Open Portal Community. All three products -- Sun's new platform for collaborative Web site design, Sun Java System Portal Server 7.2 and Liferay Portal 5.0 -- utilize the same Portlet Container and WSRP implementations. Liferay has added support for OpenSSO, a Sun-sponsored open source project that enables single sign-on capabilities and simplifies Portal access for users. Liferay has also certified the Liferay Portal 5.0 to run on GlassFish, the MySQL database server, the Solaris Operating System (OS), and Sun hardware, such as the Sun Fire X2100 M2 server.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision -- "The Network is the Computer" -- Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java, JavaOne, Solaris, Sun Fire, MySQL, GlassFish and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.


 
Press Release Finder

 
 
 

Press Contacts

Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Erica Pereira
(650) 264-2329
Contact via Email
 
Contact Information
Sun Global Communications

Download Solaris

Download Java

Download Netbeans

Download Sun Studio

Download OpenOffice.org

Oracle is reviewing the Sun product roadmap and will provide guidance to customers in accordance with Oracle's standard product communication policies. Any resulting features and timing of release of such features as determined by Oracle's review of roadmaps, are at the sole discretion of Oracle. All product roadmap information, whether communicated by Sun Microsystems or by Oracle, does not represent a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract.



Oracle - The Information Company