CMS Watch Finds Oracle Shifting Portal Emphasis to New Web Center Offering

(PRWEB) May 22, 2007 -- 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 (OWC) Suite offering.

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. "OWC 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 OWC 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). Of the two, AquaLogic appears to be gaining more traction in the portal space.

- 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.

- Microsoft has dropped the word "Portal" from its new SharePoint offering, but the new MOSS 2007 still serves as Redmond's default portal offering. It remains focused on workgroup collaboration portals.

"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, RedHat, 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.cmswatch.com.

About CMS Watch
CMS Watch(tm) evaluates content-oriented technologies, publishing head-to-head comparative reviews of leading solutions. Through highly detailed technical evaluations, CMS Watch helps sort out the complex landscape of potential solutions so that buyers can minimize the time and effort to identify technologies suited to their particular requirements. To retain its independence as a totally impartial analyst firm, CMS Watch works solely for solutions buyers and never for vendors.