Hey all,

I am in the early stages of researching portal related development tools for a project coming up. I have read over much of the material and have downloaded additional resources for the product. Below I have outlined a clip of what I am trying to accomplish and have also put together a few questions for anyone that may have the answers. I have found some or partial answers to some of my questions and requirements, but am posting here in hopes of getting some good answers and explanations. I am still gathering requirements and have more questions but for now here is what I am going on. Hopefully you all can help me out in deciding if this is a good fit. Thanks.

Overview of what I am trying to accomplish:

Develop an enterprise level portal for both internal and external use that has the capability of hosting secure applications built in ASP.NET and Silverlight. Once the user is signed into the portal they should not be required to sign into the hosted applications, forums, mail, etc. Windows based shop running .NET, Windows Server 08 and SQL 08. I need a tool to help me accomplish this task. Below are some additional requirements:

- Limit user access to particular content based on permissions.

- Capable of MSOffice integrations, such as outlook 'may' be required.

- Windows authentication for user sign in 'may' be required (If I have a local windows user account I should be able to sign in with my same credentials through the local network into the portal)

- 'May' be required to host focused advertising from ad networks on the public site and/or the portal

- Capable of RSS, Newsletters, Forums, Blogs, email notifications, etc

- 'May' be required to have users upload personal content to a review or private access area

- Capable of heavy secure - reporting, data visualization, and custom application hosting

- Public portion of site with a customized 'myPortal' after signing in, that can access both public and private content of site

- Profile customization for signed in users

- .NET 4 compatible

Questions:

1. What types of security layers do you offer?

2. What are the current limitations in terms of internal/external Portal development that I should know about before purchasing?

3. If I host silverlight applications, would there be any issues with WCF/RIA services or security that I should be aware about? Or should it be a typical .NET experience after I am logged in? (No surprises?)

4. I am also interested at why DNN uses Telerik controls and at the same time Telerik offers its own Sitefinity product - priced at about 900$ where DNN Pro is priced at $2,000. What am I missing in this relationship, and why the price difference? Is there something Sitefinity lacks that DNN has?

5. I have heard DNN is muddy, clunky, and slow..  but really I have not verified this and have no idea on what basis these things are being said. Its usually on a 'which Portal-CMS product is better forum' and perhaps because of how widely used DNN is. Is there any truth in any of this or does is come down to developers and implementation?

I am currently evaluating:

DNN (Dot Net Nuke)
Sitecore
Sitefinity
Sharepoint
Kentico
Ektron
Umbraco

I am looking at these for their .NET friendliness. JAVA and other platforms or frameworks have been thrown out because of this requirement. If you have an opinion or experience with any of these and can share I would be grateful, especially in comparison to DNN.

Thanks so much for your time.

-Ozz