An overview of Grid portal technologies for the development of HMR science gateways

Grid portals and related technologies represent an easy and transparent way for scientists to interact with Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCIs) as the Grid and the Cloud. Many toolkits and frameworks are available, both commercial and open source, but there is a lack of best practices, customization methodologies and dedicated high-level service repositories that allow a fast development of specialized scientific gateways in Europe. Starting from the US TeraGrid-XSEDE experience, in this contribution the most interesting portal toolkits and related European projects are analyzed with the perspective to develop a science gateway for HMR community within the the Distributed Research Infrastructure for Hydrometeorology (DRIHM) project.