AIIM 'Smackdown' and the Perils of Portals

The hype around enterprise portals seems to have subsided, but I believe genuine interest remains high. Yesterday at the annual AIIM Expo, we held an "Enterprise Portal Smackdown," in which a packed room of document and records managers keenly watched seven-minute demos presented by different consultancies (Ironworks, Molecular, and Liferay) demonstrating, respectively: BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, and Liferay Portal. Here's a very brief summary of the demos:• Liferay: "We're cool" • Molecular/IBM: "Beware...portals are complicated" • IronWorks/BEA: "E-business dashboards rock"

More enterprises are recognizing use-cases for accessing content repositories and services from other applications. Obviously, portal platforms represent one option here, although panelists discussing "convergence" the day before seemed a bit more sanguine about enterprise search in this regard. On the whole, I think Web and enterprise content management specialists underestimate both the power and perils of enterprise portal software.Yesterday at the annual AIIM Expo, we held an "Enterprise Portal Smackdown," in which a packed room keenly watched seven-minute demos presented by different consultancies (Ironworks, Molecular, and Liferay) demonstrating, respectively: BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, and Liferay Portal. Here's a one-liner summary of each demo: