Plumtree acquisition marks the end of an era

A lot of speculation and analysis is going on this deal. With the acquisition of Plumtree in a $200 million cash deal, BEA Systems has plucked the last remaining pure-play vendor from the portal market. Butler Group says that with Plumtree in its offering, 2005 would be the year BEA joined Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle in the "Outperform" category of the portal market.

TechWeb says that “BEA is a year behind Plumtree on the .Net side; this acquisition collapses the time line of getting that value to market.” With the portal becoming the point of integration with the enterprise BEA needed this to get out of their bread-and-butter JAVA alignment.

Internet News says that with pure players taking a beating in the last couple of years it was pretty evident that Plumtree would be picked up by a giant.

And Peter Abrahams at it-analysis.com has summed it up right;

1. Both sides are successful companies.


2. The overlap in functionality is small enough not to be an encumbrance to the integration of the Plumtree product line into BEA.


3. Plumtree comes with .Net expertise which BEA needs in order to provide a complete solution to their customers.


4. Plumtree also comes with a greater bias towards the business user rather than developer and BEA has begun to move in that direction as well.


5. Enterprises have been moving towards SOA and are keen to purchase as much of the solution from one vendor as possible. The inclusion of Plumtree in the BEA portfolio makes that much easier.

Linux is IN

These days I am exploring the beautiful world of Linux. The more I explore it the more I like it. After using it for sometime now, I am realizing that why Developers and Architects around the world are increasingly creating solutions on Linux platform. My quest with Linux is also powered on the fact that Plumtree with its new version, which is due in November, would also run on Linux.

During these days, one resource that has been there all the time for help is Linux Pocket Guide by O’Reilly. I would give two thumbs up to this book. It is especially for those who have just started using Linux and need help with figuring out how to accomplish different tasks in this OS.

Read a review of Linux Pocket Guide by O’Reilly

BEA TO ACQUIRE PLUMTREE SOFTWARE FOR USD$200 MILLION

Combination to Create the Multi-Platform Portal Leader
BEA Systems, Inc., and Plumtree Software, Inc., today announced that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement under which BEA will acquire Plumtree for approximately USD$200 million in cash. By combining the Plumtree and BEA portal portfolios, BEA will be able to better provide customers with improved enterprise productivity by offering both collaborative and transactional portals across multiple platforms and application servers, a press release from BEA said.

Under terms of the agreement, BEA will pay USD$5.50 per share, in cash, plus the assumption of outstanding Plumtree options, for a total transaction value of approximately USD$200 million.

Upon close of the transaction, Plumtree will become a part of a new BEA product unit. BEA Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President, Mark Carges, and Plumtree Software Chief Executive Officer, John Kunze, will lead the transition..

Network Computing says Fuego is the Master of the Domain

Network Computing (NWC) recently started a task of evaluating BPM suites. In their Green Bay, Wis., NWC Inc. business applications lab, they put together a dream team of nine BPM software vendors: Bluespring Software, Computer Associates, Fuego, Lombardi Software, Oracle, Pegasystems, Savvion, Tibco Software and Ultimus. They had invited nearly 20 to play, but many didn't meet their qualifications. BEA Systems, FileNet and Microsoft declined; Fujitsu and Metastorm came too late; and Appian, Chordiant Software and Vitria Technology expressed interest by never sent them their software, according to their report which released last week.

What they came out with? In their own words “Fuego's product proved the master of our BPM game and earned our NWC Inc. seal of approval, with the suites from Savvion, Oracle and CA close on its heels. FuegoBPM's simulation and process-management capabilities are extensive, its system integration and manual task features are broad and embody reuse as a default, and its BAM capabilities are open to third-party tools as well as its included toolset. Savvion BusinessManager was hampered by a weaker BAM implementation and fewer human integration options, while Oracle BPEL Process Manager was held back by its simulation and narrower process-management capabilities. CA's not-so-clever CleverPath integration and simulation kept it from the top.”