Portal Power Play

Plumtree said the move,which it plans to unveil at its annual user conference this week along with partners Cap Gemini Ernst and Young, Documentum and Oblix,will be accompanied by a bevy of announcements detailing deeper channel partnerships and the release of new server products.

Glenn Kelman, Plumtree co-founder and vice president of marketing/product management, said customers now want to address their entire Web strategies and assess where the portal fits into the big picture. "They are asking us, 'Well, if the portal is the delivery framework, how am I going to build all the Web applications within that framework?' " Kelman said.

In response to those queries, Plumtree has worked over the past year to complement its portal platform with a new line of server products for content management, collaboration, identity management, search and business process automation, said Kelman. Integrated products and services from partners are a key element of this Web enterprise strategy, he said.

The products, services and strategies can be offered in pieces or as a package, and they can provide individual enterprise business units with a foundation of technologies upon which every application can draw, said Kelman. The goal is to create a common user experience for systems and people throughout the enterprise to work together, he said.

As part of the new channel arrangement, Plumtree, based here, will resell the Oblix NetPoint Access System, which includes Oblix's Web single sign-on, authentication and authorization functionality.

Nand Mulchandani, co-founder and CTO of Cupertino, Calif.-based Oblix, said the agreement gives Oblix access to more targeted enterprise projects and a wider customer base.

Peter Novins, Cap Gemini Ernst and Young's vice president of portal and knowledge management, said working with Plumtree will give the firm a competitive edge in a hot market. He estimated that the partnership will help his division's bottom line grow by 50 percent this year. "It's about bringing the pieces together," he said.

Plumtree and its partners have already completed some initial implementations for customers including Procter and Gamble and Pratt and Whitney.

Kelman said the next step is to determine a price structure for the new offerings.