Plumtree Software

About Plumtree Software

Plumtree Software was established in 1996 by a team of product managers and engineers from Oracle and Informix, with initial funding from Sequoia Capital. The company, led by founder Glenn Kelman, carved a niche for itself by adapting the web portal concept, popularized by companies like Yahoo!, for enterprise-level computing. This positioned them as a notable early player in the enterprise portal market.

The core of Plumtree's business was the development and sale of software designed to build and manage corporate portals. These portals acted as a unified web-based environment where a company's employees, partners, and customers could access and interact with various applications and information. Their flagship offering, the Plumtree Corporate Portal, functioned as a sophisticated directory, indexing content from diverse sources like file systems, websites, and databases to create a centralized knowledge management system. A key feature introduced in 1999 was the concept of self-service, modular services called "portlets" (originally termed "gadgets"), which allowed users to customize their own portal pages.

The company's business model revolved around licensing its software to large enterprises. Its clientele included major corporations such as Airbus, Ford, Starbucks, and government bodies like the U.S. Navy. Plumtree's strategy emphasized cross-platform compatibility, engineering its solutions to operate with both Java/J2EE and .NET environments, which was a significant differentiator at the time. This technical flexibility allowed them to cater to a broader market of large organizations with heterogeneous IT infrastructures. Over time, Plumtree expanded its product line through acquisitions and internal development, creating an integrated suite that included search, collaboration, and content management servers.

Plumtree's journey as an independent entity concluded on October 20, 2005, when it was acquired by BEA Systems for approximately $200 million. The acquisition was a strategic move for BEA to strengthen its position in the portal market by integrating Plumtree's collaborative, cross-platform portal technology with its own transaction-focused WebLogic Portal. Subsequently, BEA Systems, along with the Plumtree product line, was acquired by Oracle Corporation, where the former Plumtree technology continues to be part of Oracle's product offerings.