Enterprise Information Watch™ is a service of the Real Story Group (formerly CMS Watch). We serve as a buyer's advocate for enterprises looking to invest in content technologies. We publish independent research that helps you sort out suitable technology choices for your particular needs. Our research is known for its technical depth, readability, and absolute neutrality. Learn more about our approach and analysts.

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You can find a variety of definitions for content management systems and portals, and most of them will overlap; hence so much confusion in the marketplace.

An enterprise portal generally delivers content so it can be consumed, but portal software also typically aggregates content and data from a variety of locations. Perhaps more importantly, portals are designed to deliver a variety of services as well: including search, collaboration, document management, business intelligence, business process management, and more.

A web content management system generally supports the production of content, but some products deliver content as well, which can make them "portal-like." This is especially the case in the open-source world, where the systems often grew out of dynamic page delivery systems.

In the marketplace, you'll find distinct portal and content management products, although some vendors offer both. For a list of portal products, click here on our Enterprise Information Watch service. See a very different list of web content management solutions from our CMS Watch service.

CMS (or Web CMS, or WCM) technologies manage web content publishing and, to some extent, website management. ECM generally refers to processing and collaboration use-cases involving document and image files.

From the perspective of operational practice, there are many similarities between web content management and enterprise content management. As a practical matter, however the different tools are designed to perform very different tasks, and solve different business problems.

In the marketplace, you'll find distinct ECM and Web CMS products, although some of the largest vendors offer both. Note that ECM vendors typically have distinct Web CMS products, and vice-versa. For a list of ECM products, click here. See a somewhat different list of web content management solutions here.

We cover Microsoft SharePoint in two ways. Our SharePoint Watch service helps you evaluate and optimize SharePoint as a multidimensional information management platform that purports a variety of different services -- some better than others.

Our other research channels cover a particular technology sector. And in each relevant case we evaluate SharePoint in the form of a single chapter comparing its strengths and weaknesses against its peers in that sector.

On Enterprise Information Watch, the ECM, Search, DAM, and Enterprise Portals channels all cover SharePoint and its competition.

On CMS Watch, the Web CMS and Collaboration & Community Software channels evaluate SharePoint and its competition in those segments.

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