[Zope] Does Zope stack up as a portal?

[Kyler Laird]

This is going to be a horribly-formed request, but I'm looking for some
guidance on evaluating a product being pitched.  The product is UNICON
Academus.
	http://www.unicon.net/academus/products/overview.html

It's based on uPortal
	http://mis105.mis.udel.edu/ja-sig/uportal/
a "free, sharable portal under development by institutions of higher-
education."  UNICON's offerings appear to be closed and, at least for
the authoring tool, MS Windows-only.

I want Free tools.  uPortal is better than something like Blackboard,
but it still has some severe limitations due to its licensing.  I'm
wondering if I can confidently say that Zope can readily perform the
same functions.

I like using Zope for most everything these days, but every time I go
to battle against CMF, I come away ready to continue using other
methods for awhile.  I suspect that CMF is what I would need to use to
get uPortal/Academus-type functionality without starting from scratch.

So...any opinions?  I'm looking for comments like "Zope can't touch
Academus without a *lot* of work" or "Oh, yeah, just fight through CMF
and you're almost there."  Specifics would be great, but I'll be happy
just to get some insight.  (If there's something besides CMF that can
handle this role, I'll be especially interested.)

Of course, I'd also be happy to receive offers to provide Academus-like
functionality in Zope using Free software for a price on the order of
that of Academus.  (I don't know how much they charge yet, but I will
soon.)

Thank you.

--kyler