From: Andrew Churchill [mailto:AndrewC@plumtree.com] Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 12:52 PM To: Watts, Mike Subject: A bit more information Mike, Plumtree has been getting a lot of press since our user conference last week and I thought many of these articles might be interesting to the portals group. I cut and pasted portions of a few of those articles that I thought might be particularly relevant to USDA, with links to each article below the excerpts: 1. The following article by eContent discusses Plumtree's new strategy of "Radical Openness" and Plumtree's new "Enteprise Web Applications Program." Among other Enterprise Web Applications, it mentions what DeMoines University recently deployed: << Des Moines University has deployed Enterprise Web applications for students, faculty, and staff, facilitating learning, providing self-service HR and eliminating hundreds of separate intranet sites university-wide. >> << The four major planks of this product direction are: Shared services--Plumtree is planning to re-architect its products so that search, security, collaboration, content management, and integration services are available to any application, including competing portal sites. Modular applications--Plumtree is working with applications partners to develop a standard for embedding entire Web applications in the Enterprise Web's security, navigation, and search frameworks to give users a unified experience across different applications. Mutant flexibility--Plumtree is working to develop new integration points for storing Enterprise Web content in foreign repositories, synchronizing the Enterprise Web's collaboration engine with project management systems, and building composite forms based on fields in enterprise systems such as Siebel, Oracle and SAP. Enterprise productivity--Plumtree is looking to systematically integrate with the desktop tools people use every day, such as Microsoft Office applications, email, and instant messaging to capture the efforts of individuals in an enterprise framework for collaboration and knowledge management. >> http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=5620 2. The following article by Computer Weekly discusses Ford Motor Company's global deployment of its "DealerConnection" portal. << The technology provides dealers with a single point of access to information on pricing, products, servicing, customer service and marketing, said Mark Kurring, company-to-dealer systems implementation supervisor at Ford. "Instead of creating 18 different portals for the countries in which we operate, we have developed one pan-European portal with communities and applications for each respective country and line of business," he said. "By adopting this approach, we are empowering each country to create its own environment under the European umbrella of DealerConnection, even though we still have central control over our brand, image and communication." >> << The implementation follows the success of a corporate portal rollout for 250,000 Ford employees, which was completed in the summer of 2001. >> << The DealerConnection portal, based on software from supplier Plumtree, provides Ford dealers with real-time access to information previously only available in a paper-based format, which often required up for five days to process and send out. >> http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=125660&liFlavourID=1 3. The following article by Line56 had some good insights as to Plumtree's message at Odyssey and the industry analysts' reactions to it: << The 5.0 suite is designed to allow companies to run a volume of applications targeted at specific audiences at the same time. This is different from a traditional model, according to John Kunze, Plumtree's CEO. "The Plumtree Enterprise Web is designed to run on any application server, integrate any back-end system, and allow you to build a volume of applications off of one piece of infrastructure.">> << What impresses Murphy (analyst Jim Murphy of AMR Research) most about the Plumtree conferences is the rabid participation of its clients, which numbered 750 at this show. "They have real vital technology they have built using Plumtree," the analyst says. "It's also proof of their viability that their customers are willing to stand up there and talk about their investment." >> http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=5064 4. The following article is by WSReview (Web Services Review) about Plumtree's newly announced Plumtree 5.0J J2EE Version, which will be a parallel version to our Plumtree 5.0.Net version: << With the anticipated releases of the 5.0J version of the portal, Plumtree plans to test application and Web servers including Apache Tomcat, BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere and Sun Java System Application Server, running on Sun Solaris and IBM AIX operating systems. Plumtree currently plans to offer Linux support later in 2004. >> << "We applaud Plumtree's commitment to the Java community, Web services and radical openness," said Mark Bauhaus, vice president, Java Web Services for Sun Microsystems, Inc. "That level of flexibility, choice and performance is key to the combined value of Plumtree's software in conjunction with Sun's Java Enterprise System." >> << The 5.0J version of the portal software is expected to have the same features, functionality and server architecture as the 5.0 Windows product but will have a re-designed Java kernel, and will use many J2EE components and specifications including JDBC for access to multiple databases, JMX for management and monitoring of the portal server, JNDI for naming and directory services, and JNI for JVM communication. In addition, both J2EE and .NET versions of the portal are designed to support the new Java portlet standard JSR 168. >> http://www.wsreview.com/news/newsdisplay.cfm?contentid=3433 5. The following article is by InfoWorld on the evolution of the portal into an independent infrastructure layer: << Portal vendors are changing their products into independent architecture layers that span a broad set of infrastructure pieces. As a result, the technology is enabling a new style of integration conducted by end-users at the browser level. Rather than trying to force the technology into the middleware domain, vendors are solidifying portals as a presentation layer, resigning the heavy lifting associated with integration to the middleware stack where it is easier to handle. Plumtree Software, IBM, and Microsoft are leading the way. >> << At is annual Odyssey User Conference this week, Plumtree will announce Radical Openness, a strategy designed to open its framework to support every major application server, security system, content repository, development environment, search engine, and OS, according to the company. >> http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/10/13/40NNportals_1.html 6. The following article by Information Week goes discusses two important new standards for portlets -- WSRP and JSR-168. << Just about every major portal vendor is expected to quickly adopt both standards. Plumtree Software Inc. already has revealed support for WSRP and expects to support JSR 168 as soon as it's approved. >> **Note**: JSR 168 has since been approved (see http://www.wsreview.com/news/newsdisplay.cfm?contentid=3411) and Plumtree has announced support for it via our JSR-168 Container. << The standards--Web Services for Remote Portals, approved in September, and JSR 168, expected to be approved this week--together will let companies more easily plug any compliant portlet into any portal framework that supports the standards. >> http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=15201186 Hope you find this information useful. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Andrew Churchill Federal Area Sales Manager Plumtree Software www.plumtree.com Office-703-560-3890 Mobile-703-408-3888 eFax-208-279-7344 andrewc@plumtree.com