This is the first post of John Bimson and I’s Portal Blog. We’ve actually spent a fair amount of time scouring stories, blogs, and other internet related sites looking for portal and collaboration content. To our dismay, we have not found as many people as we thought who would shed light on all the things happening in this area. Both of us have been kicking the idea of a blog around for a while and when Bill Davis said he was setting one up, we stepped in line, raised our hands and said we’d like to host a blog. While we cannot post every single day, Between the two of us, we can focus on a number of news, trends, events, and best practices related to portal and collaboration. Here is what you can expect to see on this blog:
- News in the portal and collaboration world
- Discussion on vendors products. This will include both strengths and weaknesses as we see them.
- Discussion on the various events we attend. Between the two of us, we hit major vendor conferences, Gartner, local events, etc.
- Trends. Both John and I are constantly talking to customers with very specific needs and requirements. We want to note what’s important to people and shed some light on how or if solution in the marketplace fit those needs.
- Best practices in implementing portal and collaboration solutions. Just like any other technology, there exist plenty examples of failed implementations. Most of the time, it has less to do with technology and more to do with how the tech jockeys went at creating the solution. We will even talk about the dreaded term called “Methodology”
- Related technologies: You don’t see many portal projects with Single Sign On (SSO), Content Management, Search, Services layer integration, etc. These technologies can make or break a project and so, we will cover it.
- Key standards. Web Services, WSRP, JSR 168, JSR 186, SOAP, JSR 170, and other make up many standards that impact this little world. We will discuss what they are and why they are important.
What this blog will not do:
- Participate in religious discussions. Both John Bimson and I come from backgrounds with different technologies. We both have some specific and sometimes diverging opinions. We intend to highlight our strengths and give an objective view into the marketplace around Portal and Collaboration. We don’t intend to sling mud and cause a lot of dissension. We’ll leave that to the political bloggers.
- Cover a lot of content outside of the Portal and Collaboration world. There’s too much content to discuss on this topic without the need to diverge too much.
I’m looking forward to some healthy discussions and feedback.
