FOR RELEASE: 22 May, 2007
CONTACT:
Kristie Hughes, Marketing Director, CMS Watch
Tel: +1 202 966 6999; E-Mail Kristie
CMS WATCH FINDS ORACLE AND BEA PORTAL STRATEGIES
UNDERGOING MAJOR TRANSITIONS
Customers of both companies face difficult choices
Las Vegas, NV, USA -- CMS Watch, a buyer-oriented analyst firm that evaluates content technologies, released research today at the Shared Insights' Portals and Collaboration Conference finding that Oracle is shifting its enterprise portal emphasis from its traditional Oracle Portal product to its new Oracle Web Center Suite. Meanwhile, BEA is increasingly promoting its AquaLogic portal platform over longstanding WebLogic Portal product.
This analysis stems from the 3rd edition of CMS Watch's Enterprise Portals Report, released today, which evaluates 15 major portal offerings.
CMS Watch contributing analyst Janus Boye served as lead analyst. "If you want to buy an enterprise portal from Oracle circa mid-2007, you have two choices, neither of which seems ideal," said Boye. "Oracle Web Center Suite is brand new while Oracle Portal has been languishing a bit." Boye added, "Publicly Oracle is walking a fine line: still committed to both products, but also positioning Web Center as the platform for the future, while expecting that some licensees will even purchase both platforms." CMS Watch research findings include:
- BEA also sells two portal products, WebLogic Portal Server and AquaLogic User Interaction (former Plumtree Portal). After two disappointing sales quarters for the WebLogic product line, emphasis appears to be shifting to AquaLogic, which itself is undergoing substantial re-engineering.
- Customers of Oracle and BEA should carefully assess product roadmaps before committing to one portal offering or another. Although both companies preach forthcoming convergence of their alternative platforms, customers should be remain wary in the near-term and fully understand the differences between the alternate platforms.
- IBM continues to sell a single portal product, WebSphere Portal Server. However, a complete portal solution from IBM may still require multiple different products from Big Blue.
- Microsoft has made substantial revisions to the new MOSS 2007 portal. In the absence of clear direction for future releases, customers should assume that MOSS remains best suited for simpler, collaboration portal scenarios.
"While 'PortalMania' may have subsided, the portal marketplace remains lively," noted CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne. "Among the fast-evolving open source portal offerings and a bevy of commercial alternatives, buyers have plenty of choices," Byrne added.
The Enterprise Portals Report closely examines all the major enterprise portal suppliers, including BEA, Broadvision, eXo, IBM, Jetspeed, Liferay, Microsoft, Oracle, Plone, Red Hat JBoss, SAP, Sun, and Vignette.
CMS Watch researches content technologies primarily by de-briefing enterprise customers to find usage trends and patterns. CMS Watch analysts interviewed dozens of enterprise portal customers around the world for the latest edition of this report.
The report is available for purchase at http://www.cmswatchstore.com.
About CMS Watch
CMS Watch™ is an analyst firm that provides an independent source of buyer's advice on content technologies. Through highly detailed product evaluation reports, CMS Watch sorts out the complex landscape of potential solutions so enterprise project teams can readily identify and assess technologies suited to their particular requirements. To retain its independence as a vendor-neutral analyst firm, CMS Watch works solely for solutions buyers and never for the vendors it covers.