JavaSpecification Request (JSR) 168 enables interoperability among portlets and portals. This specification defines a set of APIs for portlets and addresses standardization for preferences, user information, portletrequests and responses, deployment packaging, and security. Now, when portal developers and portal vendors adhere to this standard, any portlet developed for one portal server will be able to run on another portal server.

For example servlets developed for deploying on a WebSphere ApplicationServer can be deployed on Weblogic, JBoss, Tomcat or any other Application Server without any modifications. In present scenario, this is not true for portlets. A portlet developed for an IBM WebShere PortalServer can not be deployed to a Weblogic portal server simply due to lackof standard. Now with this standard adhered to, this has become possible.