Sharepoint interoperates with external portal platforms via WSRP

Microsoft is announcing the Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP) Toolkit for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

While SharePoint Server currently ships with a WSRP consumer (so SharePoint is able to consume portlets hosted on other portals), SharePoint Server customers let us know that there was a need for a WSRP producer for scenarios where customers need to reuse SharePoint content from other portals. With the Toolkit, our customers are able to more easily achieve integration between SharePoint and other Java-based portals in the industry today by using the WSRP standard and building a customized solution using the Toolkit.

The Toolkit provides customizable source code to help customers build ways  for producing WSRP conformant data from SharePoint lists and libraries.   External portal platforms (e.g. BEA AquaLogic Portal, IBM WebSphere Portal, SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal etc.) can then render SharePoint data natively through their WSRP consumer portlets.

This toolkit is another example of how Microsoft is driving advances in “real world” interoperability, championing greater openness by building more and more bridges between Microsoft applications such as SharePoint and other software providers.

WSRP is indeed just one of many options available to support portal interoperability and Microsoft continues to invest in open standards for interoperability including XML based web services, CMIS, Office Open XML, RSS and REST.  Microsoft is also investing heavily in Silverlight, designed to deliver rich user experiences and applications across multiple platforms.  For more details on the SharePoint interoperability story, visit the TechNet Office SharePoint Server Interoperability TechCenter.

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