Plumtree Software Monday licensed its portal
software to webMethods, who
wants to boost to its B2B integration services.
The Plumtree-powered mywebMethods.com will be offered to
offices in the U.S.
States, Europe and Asia Pacific. The portal is actually a kind of potluck
dinner whipped up with the help of a few e-business capabilities:
webMethods’ Siebel Systems customer relationship management system and its
Open Text Livelink knowledge management system are integrated into
mywebMethods.com as suites of Plumtree Portal Gadgets™.
Employees now may choose from more than 75 applications and services they need to
do their jobs in a single shot, allowing webMethods to orient new users to
the business and mobilize the entire company for rapid growth.
Many of the gadgets came ready with the Plumtree Corporate Portal, and
others webMethods developed using Plumtree’s Gadget Development Kit.
Plumtree’s integration with Siebel, which has already resulted in the
creation of over 30 gadgets, allows webMethods to deliver key services from
its Siebel system to all its employees. The gadgets are akin in appearance
to sports scoreboards or stock portfolios in consumer portals.
But what makes Plumtree’s approach interesting is that its customers benefit
from the strengths of Plumtree’s gadget partners. Hundreds of gadgets have
been developed by Plumtree and said partners, adding applications from IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp., among others.
Plumtree’s distributed administration scheme speeds the addition of new
users, whose portal preferences are created according to their roles within
the company-such as sales, marketing or customer service. Data employees
need for their particular jobs begins to funnel to their desktop when they
request the portal.
“webMethods’ employee base has tripled in just a matter of months and it’s
critical to get new employees productive as quickly as possible,” said Scott
Herman, director of Knowledge Management at webMethods. “Plumtree is helping
webMethods deliver a ‘one-stop shopping’ portal experience for all our
employees that’s easy to use and can scale…”
webMethods joins Plumtree’s litany of more than 40 partners, including Compaq Computer Corp.
To its own end, webMethods keeps such strategic company with e-commerce
heavyweights Ariba and Commerce One.
