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Overview
Portal software has had a very high profile over the last few years, particularly during the dot.com boom. The market has now stabilised substantially from the heady days of the late 1990s. Virtually every independent portal vendor has gone out or business of been acquired, the only remaining one is Plumtree. The big vendors like Microsoft, Oracle and IBM have all produced highly functional portals.
As well as this stabilisation, another trend is emerging –the ‘Yahoo!’ type of portal which simply delivers a sophisticated user interface and relatively little functionality has disappeared. If the definition of a portal remains unchanged from that commonly used in the late 1990s then does this mean that the portal itself is disappearing ?
Portals are evolving into much more fully functional collections of software tools or suites. All the leading portals offer a significant emphasis in either managing structured content, through BI tools, or managing unstructured content through content management tools. This change marks not so much the death of the portal as its re-incarnation.
This key new report from Ovum looks at the evolution of the portal. It discusses the changing marketplace, and analyses the activities of the leading portal players. It then moves on to examine the issues in portal implementation and offers advice on overcoming obstacles.
Key Messages
- Portals are a delivery channel for getting the right information to users
Personalised interfaces for delivering the information you need to do your job
- Portals provide significant added value
Providing functions such as integration adds substantial value to the UI element of a portal
- Depth of functionality is increasing and broadening
Portals are moving towards delivering suites of closely related tools
- Consolidation into suites affects software buying patterns
As the scope of tools broadens, the number of different software tools that users requires is dropping
- The broadening and deepening of functionality bring different vendors into competition
Software vendors are suddenly finding themselves in competition with vendors from unexpected areas
Table of Contents
The evolving portal
Portal standards – the unifying factor ?
The changing marketplace
Activities of the leading vendors
Portal implementation issues 
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