Plumtree grows beyond portal roots

PlumtreeSoftware this week will extend its reach into Web application building and management with the introduction of an integrated suite and a set of developer tools.

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The Plumtree Enterprise Web Suite combines new versions of the portal, search, collaboration, and content-management products into one offering designed to provide a framework for creating, managing, and delivering Web applications, according to officials.

San Francisco-based Plumtree has transformed "from a general purpose portal that lets you secure different items to infrastructure for running different Web applications, each of which has a totally different brand, different manager, different security," said Glenn Kelman, Plumtree's vice president of product management and marketing.

One of the lone remaining pure-play portal vendors, Plumtree is attempting to redefine itself in the wake of massive consolidation in the portal market combined with continuing pressure from infrastructure vendors such as IBM, BEA Systems, and increasingly Microsoft, according to Jim Murphy, senior analyst at AMR Research in Boston .

"Plumtree is keeping an eye on infrastructure providers who are providing portal frameworks based on application servers, and looking at being more complete and best-of-breed than IBM and BEA," Murphy said.

BEA, for instance, this week plans to add Web- and content-integration software from third-party Kapow into WebLogic Portal. IBM in the second quarter plans to bundle office productivity applications, such as text editing and spreadsheet, in WebSphere Portal Server. Microsoft, for its part, plans to inject the next version of SharePoint Portal Server 2003, due in the second half of 2003, with collaboration capabilities.