From Eric Roch: "Move over portal, our messaging client can be the SOA presentation layer. From a reference architecture perspective, the enterprise portal is considered the presentation layer for SOA. Portal is part of the software stack for all the major integration and SOA platform vendors. But while portal is a powerful tool, users spend a great deal of time in their email clients. Wouldn't it be great if we could service enable email as well?

For a glimpse of the SOA email future, take a look at the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. The browser-based Zimbra email client uses AJAX to provide a rich GUI and web services to extend the client's functionality. [...]"