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F E A T U R E S

The Big Three Branch Out

July 23, 2001
By Ron Anderson

For years, we've been covering messaging and collaboration products from Lotus Development, Microsoft and Novell, because for years these companies have dominated the field with Notes, Exchange and GroupWise. Having fiercely battled over the groupware market, the competitors are ready to fight for your dollars in the portal arena.

You think each of these three vendors doesn't know what the other is doing? Each company has recently released brand-new portal products: Lotus in December (followed by a more complete version, 1.0a, in April) and Novell and Microsoft in April. We don't think it's a coincidence. Since these companies seem to be joined at the hip, we decided to take a closer look at their new portal offerings to detail the similarities and differences.

Of the three, Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) is the most polished and has the early lead in third-party support (no surprise). Because our out-of-the-box experience revealed a feature-rich product that was easy to set up and configure, Microsoft's server is the one we'd be most likely to implement. While SPS is Windows-only on the server side, it does have good cross-platform client support, including support for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, and Windows, Apple Computer Mac OS and Sun Microsystems Solaris clients.

The Java- and directory-based Novell Portal Server (NPS) delivers so much cross-platform compatibility out of the gate that Novell recommended we run the product on Microsoft Windows 2000 over NetWare. The new Novell will take some getting used to. But NPS suffers from the most limited out-of-the-box functionality of the three.

Lotus' K-station holds a lot of promise but is rough around the edges, with limited support for browsers and different platforms, even at version 1.0a. K-station is tightly tied to the Domino world. The products from Novell and Lotus behaved as we've come to expect version 1.0 products to act, with installation routines that are more complex than necessary. As you'll see, both products require patience and a certain amount of tweaking to get the expected results.

When choosing a portal vendor, make features a critical consideration. If document management is high on your list, SPS is your best bet. If collaboration is critical or you're already using Domino, look closely at K-station. If you've deployed Novell's eDirectory or another LDAPv3-enabled directory enterprisewide and directory integration is high on your portal wish list, NPS might fit your plans best.