The following is the magic quadrant that I developed for portal solutions (re-posted because of a broken image in the original The big deal about portals).

Undertaking a magic quadrant is in fact a dangerous proposition given the:

• immaturity of the market
• huge number of variables from one product to another; and
• imperfect and imprecise nature of a magic quadrant.

So, this analysis is limited purely to corporate strength (financial viability – Y axis) and technical robustness (complexity – X axis). It does not necessarily take into account the particular strengths and weaknesses of each solution versus another.

This analysis graph does not constitute a full or deep analysis. It is a snapshot in time based on product reputation, review and corporate strength (financial viability) and it only considers a small percentage of the vendors. Nor does it represent an exhaustive analysis of any of the products. By no means should this represent a recommendation or caution for any product or vendor. The magic quadrant is purely a representation of only the author’s cursory, surface examination of some of the vendors.

Of course, like any magic quadrant, this diagram is imperfect. It is impossible to completely slot one vendor into one neat little box. Inevitably, each vendor has qualities that could appear in three or four of the quadrants. Hence the cautionary disclaimer language.

Read the full article The big deal about portals.

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For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

The $10 billion Navy-Marine Corps. (NMCI) intranet is not meeting its goals. The 10-year project steered by EDS has not met most of its key objectives.

Worse yet, a report by the Government Accountability Office (see GAO-07-51) is critical of NMCI for never implementing a plan developed in 2000 to measure and report project progress. GAO says that NMCI intranet – subsequently valued at $12 billion – has met a paltry three of 20 performance targets set for the intranet.

Yet again there’s proof positive that without a plan, most intranets fail and die. Many die a slow death, but they all die without a proper – and implemented – plan.

"By not implementing its performance plan, the Navy has invested, and risks continuing to invest heavily, in a program that is not subject to effective performance management and has yet to produce expected results," auditors said.

The consolidated voice, video and data network links hundreds of thousands of military and at its peak will connect more than 500,000 sailors and Marines at about 1,000 locations across the planet.

NMCI intranet facts from EDS:

• More than 500,000 users are on board NMCI. Only the Internet is larger.
• More than 305,000 seats are under EDS management – a single seat, such as a workstation or laptop, can support more than one user.
• More than 260,000 seats have been transitioned to the end-state NMCI environment.
• More than 346,000 seats are on order.
• NMCI and EDS operate:
• Four network operations centers
• Three enterprise help desks
• Sixteen (of 19 planned) classified server farms
• Thirty-one (of 31 planned) unclassified servers farms
• More than 350 sailors have attained IT-related certifications at no cost to the government, including the Department of the Navy’s first three Microsoft-certified systems engineers.
• Improved security is unquestionably NMCI’s greatest value:
• In 2005, NMCI's security stopped more than 20 million attacks on the network.
• Each month, NMCI traps, quarantines and disinfects approximately 70,000 viruses.

Read GAO’s entire evaluation report.

RELATED READING:

$9 Billion Bugs for U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (back issue)

World’s largest intranet now valued at US$12 billion

Good news and good news for world’s largest and most troubled intranet

(Chicago, IL) There are good portals. I'll admit it. Most of those good portals admittedly are the portals created by the vendors that made the software. IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft come to mind.

The problem is that most of the out-of-the-box portal solutions that I’ve seen implemented are very… well, they’re poor. I’m trying to be kind, but I’ve seen too many dismal representations.

Below are four portals, from four different organizations. I won’t identify the organizations by name because I don’t want to embarrass anyone. But they’re all the same… more or less. The same box-like pages with remarkably similar information architectures, colors and links. I mean these portals have the same section names like My Pages, Communities, Collaboration, etc.

And yet these are remarkably different companies, remarkably different industries, and remarkably different employee bases. So why should they have portals that are facsimilies of each other?

Portals can deliver a lot of benefits. The promises are huge, and some of the successes have been impressive. But portal solutions also represent a lot of pitfalls.

Read the full article The big deal about portals.