dotUmbrella should actually read OpenACS. This is what the toolkit should provide, not any other "dot" appliance.
Concerning the discussion UI vs. solid design. I would start with looking at the needs and what other vendors usually offer and what their users have to say in terms of wishlist. Just an example: In what way should dotWRK make the use of MS Project obsolete. Concerning HR, let's take a look at SAP, how they are handling the HR basics (I don't think anyone in the community would like to remodell ALL the business logic behind the SAP R/3 HR module).
Now, who is going to do this? I'd love to see some stakeholders popping up their heads saying, yep, I'm gonna write up a preliminary feature list and put it out for discussion for a specific issue. Once we have these lists we can move forward and discuss the common features and other ideas on integration.
Though having verticals is a nice idea, I think we should delay this unless client driven. We should first cover our basics before moving on to other areas. Well, and take into account that especially when it comes to verticals, we need specialists in these areas to achieve anything useful.
I'm not entirely sure about it, but my gut feeling says we would have a tremendous advantage, if we could access the SAP BAPI's through the toolkit and display most often wanted information within portlets on the website. Good item for university projects, but clearly something which will take some time (and some > 6 months).
An while talking about integration, having access to Lotus Notes databases wouldn't hurt either.
