Both IBM and Microsoft are investing heavily in major new releases to their content management and portal product offerings due out next year. Microsoft has been more open than IBM about details, but many users are already realizing that much will need to be changed and redone to implement the new versions. While we wait for the next step, both vendors are releasing service packs with Microsoft making SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP2 available earlier this week. Even though it is “just” a service pack, most IT organizations easily spend dozens of hours rolling them onto the servers and typically days or weeks of testing. This is a cost that can hardly be avoided but is rarely included in planning and budgeting.