Patent ID: 7809837

Claim:
A method in a producer system for enabling access to local portlets for remote consumers, the method comprising: storing a plurality of portlets on a producer system, wherein the portlets are configured to be utilized by pages on remote consumer systems; presenting, in a first browser window in a graphical user interface on a user system, a producer page which includes graphical representations of the plurality of portlets; providing a remote consumer system that is operable to present, in a second browser window in the graphical user interface on the user system, a consumer page that includes graphical representations of one or more portlets available for use at the remote consumer system; receiving a selection of a portlet on the producer page, wherein the selection includes dragging a graphical representation of the portlet from the producer page displayed in the first browser window to the consumer page displayed in the second browser window; and sending, in response to receiving the selection, configuration information for the selected portlet to the user system, wherein the configuration information includes an identifier for the producer system, including an Internet Protocol (IP) address for the producer system, and an identifier for the selected portlet; forwarding the configuration information from the user system to the remote consumer system; and wherein the remote consumer system uses the configuration information to utilize the portlet and to display the portlet on the consumer page.