Plumtree Software unveils intranet server

Plumtree Software (San Francisco) has unveiled its flagship Plumtree Server for intranets and knowledge management forums. The server automatically creates a card for each Web page, document, electronic mail message or database report available on the network, and organizes and creates taxonomies for those cards in a hierarchical, Yahoo-like catalog. The server currently supports four data access modules for cataloging Web pages, Microsoft Office documents, relational database reports and generic document formats. Beta data access modules for cataloging information from Microsoft Site Server, Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes are also available. Pricing for the Plumtree server starts at $30,000, on a per-server basis.

Current users include Monsanto Nutrition, Hewlett-Packard's (Greeley, CO) Workgroup Productivity Team, and KnowledgeFlow, a Philadelphia-based consulting firm. "Monsanto Nutrition and Consumer Sector purchased the Plumtree Server to bring together all of the Web pages, Notes data, documents and other types of information relevant to business problems faced by the Nutrasweet business unit," said Monsanto's Robert Plank. "Now, as a result, our end-users will be able to focus on key markets and products rather than wasting time gathering information from different sources." The bottom-line, said Hewlett-Packard Workgroup Productivity Team's John Liu, is that "this product can help HP's Workgroup Productivity Team save a lot of money maintaining intranets and other knowledge forums." The Plumtree server keeps intranet administrators from spending all day "bringing together different types of data for publication, or building a system out of text-search engines and push applications, said KnowledgeFlow CEO Dana Hoffer. "Everyone complains about information overload," he said, "but Plumtree Software is finally doing something about it.