Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals is out

I’ve learned to appreciate Gartner’s magic quadrants, though I must admit I found them strange at first.  Simplifying the state of a market down across two axis as they do turns out to be quite efficient a way to judge the competitors in the space.

The new Horizontal Portal Magic Quadrant is no exception.  By far the most obvious change in the market is that Microsoft has passed IBM to become the new market leader with the release of SharePoint 2010.  I’ve been involved with SharePoint in one way or another for most of my career and it certainly appears that the attention and effort Microsoft have put in to this product in recent years is finally getting serious attention in the marketplace.

Oracle’s acquisitions have put it up with the forerunners and IBM and SAP are holding in the leader’s quadrant fairly steadily, but by far the most interesting entry in the leader’s quadrant is Liferay.  Whilst it’s ability to execute places it very close to the axis line, it’s completeness of vision has it at a fairly good mid-point, and by far the most interesting thing about it is the fact that it is open-source.

The graph might not have it as a serious contender against heavyweights like IBM and Microsoft, but the fact it gets into the same quadrant at all speaks volumes for the amount of effort that has gone in to this project and, driven by the current economic climate, it would seem they have had the opportunity to prove themselves at some larger client sites.

Certainly an interesting developing market and worth watching.

New Blog!

Hey everyone,

It’s been a while between posts I know, all I can say is I’ve been busy, sorry.  I have a couple of articles half-written to share here, it’s just a matter of finding the time to finish them.

In the meantime, long-time readers of my blog would know that as well as being a software developer, i’m also an author.  I’ve decided this year I’m going to attempt to participate in NaNoWriMo (because my life just isn’t hard -enough- already).  I’ve wanted to do it for many years now and it seems there is always a reason not to.  This year i’m going to attempt it anyway and damn the reasons!

That said, it occurs to me that many of my regular visitors are actually here for the technical content rather than any of the other posts that go up from time to time. With that in mind, i’d like to announce the creation of a new blog, Nulla Lux Sine Tenebrous, which will be the posting-point for my rants, NaNoWriMo updates, complaints and general chattiness.  This blog will remain, as always, and although I can’t promise a great acceleration in content I will certainly not abandon it.  It will be devoted, from this point on, to primarily technical content – such as the articles and quick how-to’s that seem to draw the lion’s share of the traffic to this site.

Thanks to everyone who has followed this blog over the last few years, I hope you all stick around – and if you’ve a taste for it, wander over to the new blog as well.