Are mashups the new portals and gadgets the new portlets?

I think this article is of interest : Are mashups the new portals and gadgets the new portlets?

Basically the author presents some new ways of delivering "portlet like" use-experience, and how new web 2.0 technologies (like Ajax, or gadgets) can allow you to "build" a portlet containers by including your piece of information into any kind of page runtime (HTML, PHP, etc).

Even if, from a technical point of view, I do not think that portal software will dissapear, because I do think that portal provides much more features than a simple portlet rendering zone (like security management on Portlets), it is interesting to notice the new possibilites of web 2.0 technologies.

Also I can confirm that deploying a portal into a large company is really a challenge ! But I think that even if such project has a cost, and is of course technically and functionaly complexe to implement, this is clearly the best strategy if one want to reduce costs in the long term...