BEA closes US$204m Plumtree acquisition

Stan Beer
Monday, 24 October 2005 11:00

IT Industry - Strategy

Enterprise infrastructure software vendor, BEA Systems, has closed its acquisition of portals vendor Plumtree Software for US$204m.

Plumtree Software provides enterprise portal solutions to connect disparate work groups, IT systems and business processes.  Its portfolio features a cross-platform portal, running on both J2EE and .Net.  By combining the Plumtree and BEA portal portfolios, BEA aims to provide an open solution for customers to leverage portal technologies as part of their service-oriented architecture while being free to choose how best to mix-and-match applications servers, operating systems, development environments and programming languages.

"The portal is becoming the point of integration in the enterprise," said Alfred Chuang, chairman and chief executive officer, BEA Systems. "Plumtree is a leader in the market for collaborative portals that enhance enterprise connectivity and productivity. BEA is a leader in high-volume, transactional portals for customer and partner interaction as well as internal operations.  Today, BEA provides the most complete portal portfolio that spans J2EE and .Net, providing a balanced perspective or view within the enterprise on both the people and operational side of the business."

The acquisition was approved by the Plumtree's stockholders at a meeting held on October 20, 2005.  Effective immediately, Plumtree will become a key part of BEA. As part of the close of the transaction, Plumtree is a new BEA product unit led by BEA chief technology officer and executive vice president, Mark Carges.