I think the fact that makes it seem blurry is that CMS have been there before (am i sure?) portals (JSR 168...etc). With todays products, YES it is blurry, but the concepts are distinct. Roughly, a portal - at least a JSR168 compliant one - manages applications that produce web pages pieces - portlets. One of portals' first objectives is integration. There for a portal can serve as base for any system or any kind of application, as long as it is compliant to the portal's portlet spec). Wheras a CMS is what its name says, an application/system that manages content. CMS, in genertal don't integrate easly. Somthing that might help here is for CMS folks to propose there Systems as a set of portlets that can be deployed in a portal. This way the line would be cristal clear. I hope this helps... :)

Reda