This work presents a framework for the design and development a grid-enabled portal prototype for a Grid-based Utility Infrastructure for SMME-enabling Technology (GUISET) initiative - a utility computing platform. The GUISET portal has been designed to cater for both the traditional grid requirements and some of the relevant additional requirements for utility computing contexts. It's based on various relevant techniques and technologies used in grid-enabled portal designs. This include: Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Component-Based development (CBD), Utility Computing, Grid technologies and Web 2.0. The portal prototype is built using Liferay 5.2.3 portal tool kit bundled with Tomcat 6.0.18 as the core components adopted for the implementation. An evaluation of the grid-enabled portal prototype was conducted using a set of benchmark requirement standards, and also the usability evaluation of the portal prototype in a controlled experiment by a group of experienced users. The result of the evaluation of the GUISET portal prototype using a set of benchmark requirements (standards) revealed that it fulfilled the minimum requirements to be suitable for the utility context.