Peter,

 I have recently attended a week long workshop on WebCenter and I have to say, my brain hurts halfway through it.  The product seems like it offers a substantial amount of functionality and obviously is the backbone of the Fusion applications.  While that being said, I see the learning curve as being tremendously high and as mentioned earlier, the prices tag a tad steep.  I have spoken to three clients just yesterday and it seems that all are confused about what their idea of WebCenter is.  Each has stated, we want Oracle's new portal product, WebCenter.  I have to explain to them that this is not a ready to be used out of the box portal product, but merely a framework to build portalized type applications.  If you want to buy the out of the box portal that is built upon this framework, you will have to purchase the Spaces product.  To watch their blank stares is quite amusing because they don't seem to get it, but who can blame them with such a complex product stack.  When I tell them that one would have to utilize the WebCenter framework and build their own custom portal from this, most run from the hills.  They shout, bring on SharePoint, what happened to my old AquaLogic UI.  My question from all of this is as follows:  Can the Spaces product be utilized in a sense of how the old ALUI product was utilized for organizations?  It seems that this product can handle integration with security suites, consume custom portlets and applications, provide out of the box security, content management and document management. If it can do all of this, why not tout this as Oracles new Portal product vs. merely a collaboration tool.  I might get stoned for saying this, but I find little to no value in any Web 2.0 features such as collaboration.  Trying to sell a client who wants to run a business application within an enterprise portal a collaboration suite is extremely difficult.    Could you give me your opinion on this matter and how you feel the Spaces product might evolve as a business productivity enterprise portal vs. a collaboration platform.  It seems that the eventual demise of three solid portal platforms for a collaborative suite and a development platform is a step back.

thanks,

Brandon