Enterprise portals fit well into an organization's service-oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure, but when it comes to selecting and implementing portals it's important to avoid common pitfalls, says Craig Roth, who covers enterprise portal products as service director for Burton Group Inc.

He has just published a 14-page Enterprise Portal Reference Architecture Template that covers how to do a portal right, he has also seen what can go wrong. "I've seen an awful lot of common mistakes that are made in enterprise portal projects, anywhere from the beginning of the lifecycle to the end," Roth said.