Only 12 enterprise portal vendors remain on Gartner’s latest magic quadrant for “horizontal portal products.”

 

The only changes are the subtraction of BEA, now part of Oracle, and the addition of Covisint and RedHat (though lest they be seen as ‘prescient’ I had included them in my Portal magic quadrant two years ago!). Also added to this year’s quadrant is the one to really watch: Liferay.



 

Some of Gartner’s findings include (most of which I highlighted two years ago):

 

  • Mashups, lightweight composite applications based on Web-oriented architectures (WOAs), could emerge as alternatives to horizontal portal frameworks for creating enterprise Web environments
  • Increased interest in Web 2.0
  • By 2011, Gartner expects at least 10% of new enterprise portal projects in the Global 2000 to use open-source horizontal portal frameworks

 

Frankly, I’m surprised more organizations are not using portals. The Intranet 2.0 study reveals that only 10% of respondents (some 230 respondent organizations thus far) use a portal product to power their intranet. However, these solutions are complex, and pricey.

 

I will not be doing an update of the Prescient Portal magic quadrant just yet: there haven’t been enough significant changes… the only one is to remove BEA’s label under Oracle.

 

I do however note the following trends:

 

  • Gartner is spot on: open-source will become more and more popular
  • Liferay is the challenger to watch (Gartner thinks its RedHat)
  • Plone could well find its way onto the quadrant but Python holds it back
  • IBM is the portal leader and champion
  • Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS 2007) is the darling
  • Product consolidation is largely over as IBM, Oracle and Microsoft will own 95% of the total money put into portal solutions (but Vignette won’t last much longer and will be bought)
  • Usability and price will be the principal weaknesses that scare buyers
  • Web 2.0 functionality will continue to grow but not be a primary consideration for buyers

 

RELATED READING:

The Intranet Portal Blueprint

Pros and cons for enterprise intranet portals

Another portal bites the dust


ALSO:

Don’t forget: you cannot get the full results of the Intranet 2.0 study without taking the survey.  Please take 10 minutes to take the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey and you’ll get a copy of the full results including the good, bad and learned lessons – ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT TO PARTICIPATE IF YOU DON’T HAVE INTRANET 2.0 TOOLS.


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