How does IBM Workplace, WPS and WAS work together?

For those of you trying to figure out what IBM Workplace really is about and how it works with Websphere Portal Server and Websphere Application Server I have read a really good article about it. It gave me a good starting point and knowledge that helped me further on in the process of understanding. If you're interested in this, read Bob Balabans article 'Under the hood of IBM Workplace Collaboration Services'.

When done with that you might start thinking about things like what backend-applications to connect to the framework and how to make portlets to present in your portal, what information they should present and so on. How many portal sites do we need? one for internet? one for intranet and one for extranets? or one for all. How do we implement Single Sign-On (SSO) (read these three great articles: part1 and part2 and a contrarian view) and where should our users be stored, in which LDAP? Which tools do we use for development and web content management.

Folks, you're looking at an advanced portal framework with all it's components!