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IBM'S RECENT ACQUISITION of portal-development-tools supplier Bowstreet Inc. highlights how portals increasingly are being put to work as integration tools. But the popularity of portals underlines just how reluctant companies are to spend a lot of money moving from legacy systems to the service-oriented architectures that IT vendors tout as the future.
Portal technology is increasingly winning favor as a way to minimize custom coding, integrate disparate applications and data sources, and even develop small-scale service-oriented architectures. Fifty-three percent of companies have intranet or internal portals on their IT project lists this year, according to Information-Week Research's Outlook 2006 survey of 300 business-technology professionals.
IBM, in revealing the Bowstreet acquisition in late December, said Bowstreet's tools help businesses use portals to build composite applications that connect apps, databases, documents, and corporate information, especially linking new applications with legacy systems. IBM didn't disclose what it paid for the privately held Bowstreet, which...