Johns Hopkins Goes Mobile on uPortal

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 04/23/08

Johns Hopkins University has chosen Unicon to develop and deploy the school's new mobility theme based on uPortal, the open source enterprise portal for higher education. The mobility theme is designed to enhance the functionality and content of Johns Hopkins' campus portal to make it accessible by mobile devices such as cell phones, smartphones, and PDAs. The mobility development work and testing is scheduled to be completed and go live in the summer of 2008. The university plans to donate the mobile development work back to the uPortal open source community.

uPortal is an open source enterprise portal collaboratively developed by higher-education. Using Java, Extensible Markup Language (XML), JavaServer Pages Technology (JSP) and Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technologies, the uPortal framework enables standards-based integration with authentication and security applications, single sign on secure access and end-user customization.

"Mobility is a way of life for many of our students, faculty and administrators, as well as the worldwide general public," said Theron Feist, senior enterprise developer for the school. "As a forward-looking institution for higher learning, it is important for us to evolve and keep pace with the sociological and technological changes occurring in the real world."

Unicon said in a statement that it has helped 150 colleges and universities with implementations of uPortal since 1999.