Dawn of the Dead: Portals' Revenge
By Dan Burger
Portals are not dead. They've just been sleeping. Almost all highly hyped technology eventually moves into reality, where the effects of market consolidation and sometimes technology commoditization can dull a formerly bright star. But this could be a better time and place for portals thanks to social media and cloud computing. The big guys-- IBM , Oracle , Microsoft , SAP , and a few others are poised. While some smaller vendors are featuring lighter weight and lower cost products.
We're still in the midst of a major hype storm that's dumping huge amounts of propaganda concerning social media and cloud computing. That's not said to condemn these technologies, but said as a warning to keep your shovels handy. When it comes to portals, at least there's a track in the snow to follow.
"I think the portal hype has diminished in the past several years," says Gartner portal and Web technologies expert Jim Murphy, who talked with me last week. "There is a lot of frustration with portals not necessarily meeting the promise that companies were led to believe they would get. And now there are some disruptive factors like social environments. Companies are wrestling with the idea of creating a Facebook-like mechanism with the goal that it can or should replace the traditional portal."