Beyond the portal

Plumtree has unveiled a new strategy for creating Web applications it calls the Enterprise Web. The company says its new approach offers business units throughout an organization a foundation of technologies on which every application can draw and creates a common user experience for systems and people across the enterprise to work together.

As part of this strategy, Plumtree says it’s complementing its portal platform with a new line of server products for content management, collaboration, identity management, search and business process automation. The company has also announced an integration plan with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Documentum and Oblix.

Plumtree says the Enterprise Web is built on the existing applications and application servers that run a business and consists of four elements:

integration products--Web services that combine applications and information from traditional systems such as SAP and Siebel;

foundation services--the core services typically needed to build Web applications, such as search and identity management;

portal software--the working environment for creating user experiences that incorporate many systems and services; and

composite applications--user experiences for a specificaudience and function, such as employee services or customersupport.

The entire architecture is Web services-based, allowing these elements to run on different application servers.