eXo Blog – The Cloud User Experience Platform

Users connect, collaborate, and improve productivity — in the cloud, on mobile devices, or on the ground

• Multi-tenancy support for deployment in public and private clouds
• Secure access to personal dashboards, documents and activity streams via native mobile apps
• Social network features and integration with existing infrastructure
• Mashup and gadget development for third-party app integration in built-in web IDE

San Francisco, CA – January 31, 2012 – eXo, the user experience platform-as-a-service (UXPaaS) company, today announced general availability of eXo Platform 3.5. This new release of eXo Platform is designed for organizations that want a cloud-enabled solution for creating and managing next-generation portal-based sites that facilitate engagements between colleagues, customers, or partners, and can easily integrate with existing enterprise applications, policies and procedures.

Enterprises today require greater flexibility and tools that will enable them to deliver rich user experiences for a variety of use cases — social intranets, extranets, transactional websites and more. They want options to deploy in the cloud or in the back office, to integrate with external web services and internal line of business applications. The eXo user experience platform (UXP) gives IT professionals the resources they require to meet all these needs.

“Built on open standards and open source technologies, eXo Platform 3.5 has the features and extensibility of a UXP and the cloud architecture to build public and private clouds. We built the first true UXPaaS,” said Benjamin Mestrallet, founder and CEO of eXo. “Imagine company ABC wanting to integrate their custom-built inventory application in an enterprise portal with social networking and document management capabilities, and then deliver that as a private cloud service to all their customers. eXo Platform 3.5 enables them to do just that — and to do it very efficiently.”

The Emergence of the UXPaaS

The user experience platform (UXP) is the emerging implementation of next-generation portal services. Unlike traditional portal services, though, a user experience platform offers an organization an integrated collection of technologies that speed the creation of portals built around content, collaboration capabilities, social streams and services, mobile access and more. eXo Platform has long provided these integrated platform services.

With the release of eXo Platform 3.5, eXo has added support for multi-tenancy and engineered this platform to be cloud-ready. Now, organizations or service providers that want to offer a UXP as a service — a UXPaaS — can do so. A single instance of eXo Platform 3.5 can support many UXP-based social intranets, extranets, transactional websites and more for many different clients, each in their own private cloud environment. To understand the UXPaaS landscape, see http://budurl.com/kah4.

Native Mobile Apps and Cloud-Ready Features for Unprecedented Deployment Flexibility

Using eXo Platform 3.5, companies can create a secure portal-based site and add the user experience services — such as content, document management and social activity streams — that best suit project needs. IT organizations can give their end users an easy yet controlled way to interact with their networks and work collaboratively. Key technology enhancements in eXo Platform 3.5 include:

• Mobile Apps: Native iPhone, iPad and Android apps integrate elegantly with sites built on eXo Platform 3.5, ensuring that users can interact with personalized gadget dashboards, activity streams, document repositories and more — at any time, from anywhere.

• Cloud-Ready: Support for multi-tenancy deployments includes the option to host isolated portals on a single auto-scalable instance of eXo Platform 3.5. The unique integration capabilities and extensive set of UXP features enable enterprises, service providers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to build their own private and public cloud offerings with immediate productivity.

Additionally, eXo Platform 3.5 includes a range of new or enhanced features for delivering a rich user experience:

• Simpler, More Intuitive Interface: The look and feel of all of the built-in apps has been refreshed for eXo Platform 3.5, with the goal of greater simplicity and enhanced readability. In addition, the new desktop mode allows users to access eXo Platform 3.5 services in a familiar and windowed environment, right within the browser.

• Enhanced Social and Collaboration Tools: Rich collaboration features such as an enterprise Wiki, forums, polls, FAQs and shared calendar components (including remote calendar synchronization) are standard. Social network capabilities empower users to create work groups, follow activity streams of connections and groups, and more.

• Improved Content Management: Enterprise Content Management features provide the ability to store, share, version and organize documents; integrate advanced workflows; and create dynamic content-rich websites. eXo Platform 3.5 introduces search engine optimization (SEO) features, improves Java Content Repository (JCR) performance, and enhances content explorer usability. Easier website authoring is facilitated by the new inline editing feature, making it possible to edit and publish content from the front-end in a single click.

• Embedded IDE: An integrated web development environment (IDE) is embedded in eXo Platform 3.5, which enables an IT team to develop, customize and extend the experience presented to a user in a platform-based engagement environment. Developers can create and refine elements on the fly and deploy with one-click ease.

• Integrated Sample Sites: The website samples included with eXo Platform 3.5 have been expanded to illustrate how developers can take advantage of many of the new features of eXo Platform 3.5 — from UI customization to the inclusion of rich content and improved site navigation.

• eXo Platform Gadget Pack: The gadget pack includes 15 new gadgets that provide easy access to variety of adoption, collaboration, development, monitoring, social and other eXo Platform services. With easy access to the source code, developers can also use these gadgets as templates for building additional extensions and quickly become productive with the REST API of eXo Platform 3.5.

• Enterprise Portal Framework: Integrated portlets, user- and role-based views, security, and single sign-on features (including integration with existing Active Directory and other LDAP systems) are supported.

Pricing and Availability

eXo Platform 3.5 is available today in two editions:

• eXo Platform 3.5 Enterprise Edition is a full-featured implementation of eXo Platform 3.5. Offered under a subscription model, it includes the support and services needed for deployment in an enterprise production environment. Features include support for native mobile applications and multi-tenant deployment, as well as clustering, built-in web IDE and the eXo Platform Gadget Pack.

• eXo Platform 3.5 Community Edition is an open source package of the core features of eXo Platform 3.5. It is ideal for developers who do not require production support, mobile or cloud deployment options, or the extensibility and customization capabilities provided by the Gadget Pack or embedded IDE.

A 30-day trial version of eXo Platform 3.5 can be downloaded here.

Visit the website for more information about eXo Platform 3.5.

Additional Online Resources

• Discover eXo Platform 3.5 in 3 minutes
• eXo’s CTO Gives a Full Feature Tour of eXo Platform 3.5
• What’s New in eXo Platform 3.5
• eXo Platform 3.5 datasheet
• eXo Platform 3.5 features table