A recent review of the Sun JavaTM System Portal Server 7.0 applauds how it eases the creation of workgroup collaboration areas with "novel" wiki support, but the analysts note the portal server is not widely adopted and lacks BI and reporting tools.

The review was posted on the Intelligent Enterprise portion of the TechWeb site, and it was written by Janus Boye and Tony Byrne of the Enterprise Portals Report. The report was originally published by CMS Watch, an independent source of analysis and advice on content management, portals and enterprise search.

The portal server is well suited to companies with content management, collaboration or workflow requirements. The Sun product is characterized as "a bit less usable out of the box compared to other products, such as BEA AquaLogic Interaction Server, Microsoft SharePoint Portal, Oracle Portal and Vignette Portal."

The report also states that the wiki has a friendly editor that makes it easy to use for nontechnical people. "Another nice detail is that you can have portlets inside the wiki, which enables integration with useful functionality (such as automatically finding related postings) or external content."

Live collaboration is supported with a tool from Elluminate. IM is also available. FatWire's JavaTM technology-based Spark PCM (Portal Content Management) is bundled with the portal. The report recommends evaluating if a CMS or document management system is what you need and which one since Sun has partnerships with Interwoven. The report says "..but the products from FatWire are Java-based, unlike TeamSite (from Interwoven), and might be a better and cleaner architectural choice."

Some of Sun's terminology for components and features are explained: for example, the portal dashboard is called the front channel.

There is a search engine from Sun Labs that uses federated search capabilities. "Sun's search technology deserves respect from an engineering standpoint, but it hasn't been broadly deployed, so it's a bit of an unknown quantity, particularly when it comes to indexing nonportal content. Thus, it may not be the right solution for broader enterprise search."

They also recommend testing performance of the product if you plan to use it on hardware other than Sun's. In conclusion, "Sun's community-oriented tools and open-source positioning are welcome departures for the portal market. Like Oracle, Sun is clearly trying to take on Microsoft, albeit with an emphasis on Java-based development. But it will take more than free software and a fresh coat of Web 2.0 to win over the masses." See the full review for more details. [...read more...]

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