Playing devil's advocate here because I think the debate is important! Yeah, installation of WebSphere Portal is complicated...the 11 disk thing bums be out. I think that is the biggest complaint from IBM users (mine too). JBoss Portal was soooo easy to get going, that was very refreshing! I don't find the support mechanism very cumbersome, in fact their patch delivery mechanism is very slick. I like the idea of patching my installation vs replacing the install. My biggest complaint is finding the patch I need or even knowing when a patch has been released. I guess that could be a separate discussion. The EJB3 feature is delivered via their "Feature Pack" mechanism. If you have used WebSphere in the past, one of the huge complaints was that they were forever lagging in keeping up with the Java standards. This new feature pack idea is how they plan on keeping their server line current, without having to move to a new version of the product. Which is very appealing to the people that have dozens (or hundreds) of instances running. I don't see this as a negative, but as an improvement on one of their previous shortcomings. Only time will tell if addresses the issue at hand. I'm not sure about bloated and slow, I guess we'd need to see some data on that. WebSphere does have a larger footprint, but that alone does not mean bloated or slow. Where is your area, because I'd love to get $200/hr! My last two projects have been as consultants...one for WebSphere Portal, one for JBoss Portal. My final rate to the client has been the same for both projects. I know if you go to IBM directly they charge a premium. Yes they have a huge consulting arm and you don't always get what you pay for. I guess the message is to stay away from their consulting arm, there are plenty of other people to get consulting services from other than IBM. As far as the codebase for IBM Portal, their first version (many years ago) was Jetspeed with IBM stuff on top. That was long before JSR 168 (which they were the lead on the spec)...since then it has grown/changed dramatically. Nobody in the industry is free from this practice, ask JBoss about their ESB. My experience with JBoss Portal has been very positive, as has my experience with WebSphere Portal. There are positives and negatives to each...I will say this, in the open-source portal space, JBoss Portal seems to be the best. I have tried (not delivered applications) Liferay and JetSpeed2. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4130473#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...