Mainsoft Corporation has announced the availability of Visual MainWin for J2EE, Portal Edition, a set of .NET extensions for WebSphere Portal that enables IBM customers to run ASP.NET applications natively on WebSphere Portal. Validated by IBM as Ready for IBM WebSphere Software, Visual MainWin makes it faster and easier for IT organizations to populate WebSphere Portal with ASP.NET applications and realize a fully integrated, mixed Portal environment, with easy access to ASP.NET and Java applications.

To rapidly deploy portal initiatives across the .NET and J2EE technology frameworks, Mainsoft also announced today it has partnered with two IBM Premier Business Partners: The TamGroup, specializing in the integration, management, and delivery of information via Portals, and with Prolifics, an award-winning and leading provider of WebSphere, Portal, SOA, and Business Integration solutions. The IBM business partners can recompile ASP.NET applications into Java portlets on a fixed-time, fixed-cost basis, typically at a rate of 5,000 lines of code per day. Mainsoft also transfers the cross-platform tools .NET developers need to easily maintain ASP.NET applications on WebSphere Portal.

"Working with Mainsoft and leading strategic integrators, IBM customers can protect existing investments and jump-start their implementation of Service Oriented Architecture, with reusable Java and .NET components," said Antony Satyadas, Chief Competitive Marketing Officer, IBM Lotus Software. "IBM WebSphere Portal and ISV business partners such as Mainsoft make it easy for role based execution of business processes, regardless of whether their applications and services were originally written in Java, C#, or Visual Basic .NET."

"Mainsoft and Tam Group share a common vision of helping IBM customers deliver a single point of personalized interaction for all enterprise applications and services," said Bob Hoover, president of The TamGroup. "Customers with dual technology Frameworks can now derive even greater end-user benefits and ROI from their portal initiatives by running their ASP.NET applications natively on WebSphere Portal."

"We consider this partnership a big win for our enterprise customers, particularly in the insurance, banking and financial services sectors, where mergers between businesses with different technology platforms are common," said Nicolas Jabbour, CTO of Prolifics. "Mainsoft's solution enables a rapid deployment of existing ASP.NET applications on WebSphere Portal, and they make it easier for our customers to maintain portal initiatives using the same enterprise development teams that created the original ASP.NET application.

Visual MainWin extends WebSphere Portal's many enhanced end-user features to ASP.NET applications, according to Mainsoft. End users gain an end-to-end, single sign-on experience, consistent branding across ASP.NET and Java applications, full click-to-action support between ASP.NET and Java portlets, Workplace People Awareness for ASP.NET applications and full integration into WebSphere Portal navigation.