Portals: From SOA to Mashups - Quotes from Ray Valdes @ Gartner

The theory of horizontal portal technology and of enterprise portal deployments, as articulated by portal vendors over the past decade, is compelling and comprehensive. Portals can serve as a unifying force in a fragmented IT environment —or at least have the potential of fulfilling that promise. Portals can free up content and business logic that is locked up in silos, and enable users to reach their full productive potential through elimination of barriers —roadblocks such as inconsistent user interfaces, a plethora of passwords to access different applications, the lack of application integration that can support high-value business processes to a broader range of users, and so on. The reality of actual practice is not quiteso bright and shiny, unfortunately. Many portal projects fall from snappy kickoff meetings into a quagmire of unclear governance, complex technology, lack of skilled staff, high-ceremony methodologies, unsupportive vendors, and sparse ecosystems. While many organizations do achieve ROI and productivity targets, others find heavyweight, centralized portal projects are lost in extended "dark" periods lacking visible results for end-users. This leads some managers of departments and business units to respond with frustration and with tactical"rogue" portal projects that may solve local-scope problems while contributing negatively to the overall IT crazy-quilt environment. SOA initiatives in some enterprises have followed a similar downward trajectory, with less-than-optimal results to show after an extended period of investment.