Aqualogic

According to Jason Stamper, editor of Computer Business Review, Oracle will release a new portal product at the end of the year called Oracle Workplace Portal. Mr. Stamper confirmed this news with a European Oracle representative. Supposedly the new portal differ from the existing Oracle Portal, as it'll be less focused on intranet scenarios. This may sound a bit like competing vendor BEA, which already has two products: AquaLogic User Interaction (former Plumtree) and WebLogic Portal. In another interesting commentary Mr. Stamper quotes BEA CEO Alfred Chuang as saying: "We could integrate them but some companies are buying both...I'm trying to sell everyone who has one the other, and it's going well." It would seem like the original integration plans between the 2 BEA portal products may be revised and BEA may keep the two very different product lines. Will IBM and SAP also launch another portal product soon? Challenging times for buyers indeed

CMS Watch is producing a track at the upcoming AIIM Expo, and one of the sessions on the agenda is an "American Idol"-style competition, where portal vendors, integrators, and consultancies can show off the best of their Enterprise Portal offerings. The audience votes for the winner! If you're a portal vendor or services firm whose built a portal using one of the major portal technologies (e.g., MOSS 2007, BEA WebLogic or AquaLogic, IBM WebSphere, Vignette Portal, JBoss Portal, SAP Enterprise Portal, or any of the other ones listed here) you're elegible to show it off at the AIIM Expo. Selected participants will receive free admission to the conference. If you're interested, let me know. In your email, include your name, a short description of your portal, and what technologies you would demonstrate. See you in Boston!

Last week portal vendor BEA announced new products for Microsoft SharePoint integration. The new SharePoint Console "...is designed to help provide support for integrating and governing Windows SharePoint Services within a BEA portal deployment." This is an interesting though perhaps inevitable development, where BEA recognizes the tremendous impact of SharePoint in the enterprise, while still fighting to justify its own portal offerings. Of course, portals can serve quite different business purposes, and SharePoint has managed to achieve viral growth among workgroups. Although BEA simply mentions "BEA Portal" it is perhaps a meaningful sign that this new module comes from the AquaLogic product family (a.k.a., the former Plumtree Portal which is being kept as a separate product), and not the WebLogic family.

In a recent outline of their portal consolidation plans, BEA announced that they will keep both portal product lines, BEA WebLogic Portal and the acquired Plumtree, throughout 2006. Plumtree recently released G6 of their portal product, which BEA is rebadging as "AquaLogic User Interaction." It is interesting to note that BEA added Plumtree to the AquaLogic family rather than the WebLogic family. According to BEA, this "puts a face to SOA", but one could argue that so does (or should) WebLogic Portal. Very few vendors have successfully maintained multiple product lines with such an overlap for a longer period of time, and it remains to be seen how it will impact sales. The migration from both products to the combined release could be a major issue in 2007 for existing customers.

In a rather strange commentary, BEA Senior Product Manager Josh Lannin recently claimed on his blog that Oracle is leaving existing portal customers in the dust with its new WebCenter suite product. WebCenter Suite is Oracle's 2nd portal product. The portal marketplace is highly competitive, so you shouldn't be surprised when one casts aspersions on another. As readers of the Enterprise Portals Report know, what's ironic here is that BEA itself already has two portal products (WebLogic Portal and AquaLogic User Interaction). Remember your mother's advice about people who don't have good things to say...