Investment Follows Enterprise-Wide Portal Deployment Commitments From Ford and Procter & Gamble
Corporate portal market-leader Plumtree Software today announced the closing of a $23 million mezzanine round of financing from strategic customer investors Ford (NYSE: F) and Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), and institutional investors Janus Venture, Putnam, Aman Ventures and Sybat. Ford and Procter & Gamble’s investments follow agreements to deploy Plumtree’s flagship Plumtree Corporate Portal enterprise-wide at both companies, which purchased licenses for 200,000 and 100,000 employees, respectively, as detailed in separate press releases issued today. Plumtree is a provider of corporate portal software, the infrastructure for companies to create a personalized Web portal for their employees, customers and partners to access all the applications and services available on their corporate networks and on the Internet.
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By GlobalDataInvestors in Plumtree’s previous rounds of financing, including Cambridge Technology Partners, H&Q Venture Associates, Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.) Inc., Red Rock Ventures and Sequoia Capital, joined new participants in the mezzanine round. The proceeds will underwrite Plumtree’s recent expansion to Europe and Asia, and aggressive hiring across all departments.
“Ford Motor Company has confidence in Plumtree’s technology, its engineers, its services capability and management team,” said Jim Yost, CIO and Ford Motor Company vice president. “We believe that providing employees with a personalized, adaptable working environment will result in increased business acumen, better productivity and improved decision making.”
“The personalized portal technology we are collaborating with Plumtree to create allows our employees to remove barriers and make connections. It will deliver a new, more effective workplace environment by providing an inter-connected structure that facilitates innovation and speed,” said Steve David, Procter & Gamble Chief Information Officer. “P&G is excited about our investment in Plumtree. Their technical expertise combined with P&G’s core competencies and global scale will set the industry standard for corporate portal technology.”
“Having worked with Plumtree over the past 12 months, we are encouraged and gratified to note the significant strides the company has made during that period to acquire customers,” said Kip Myers, general partner, Red Rock Ventures. “With additions to its client roster such as Ford and Procter & Gamble, Plumtree is realizing its goal of being the premier supplier of corporate portal software and services.”
“Janus prefers to invest in emerging leaders of potentially large markets. We believe Plumtree is the leader of a market that will change what corporate computer users see at the beginning of each day,” said William Bales, portfolio manager, Janus Venture. “The company’s founding vision and overwhelming technology advantages are now complemented by a portfolio of Fortune 500 reference customers, strong management and the sales and marketing muscle to bring its portal product to a mass market.”
Investors participating in the mezzanine financing are:
— Aman Ventures
— Cambridge Technology Capital Fund
— Credit Suisse First Boston Venture Fund
— Ford Motor Company
— H&Q Venture Associates, LLC
— Janus Venture Funds
— Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc.
— The Procter & Gamble Company
— Putnam Investments
— Red Rock Ventures, LP
— Sequoia Capital Sybat, LLC
— Private investors
“This investment marks a major milestone in Plumtree’s history, giving Plumtree the capital and corporate support to realize fully its founding vision — to create an electronic space where people work and where businesses exchange content and services,” said Plumtree CEO John Kunze. “That two of our Fortune 50 customers are supporting us as partners highlights Plumtree’s success as the first to bring corporate portal deployments to the widest possible stage, integrating the global electronic resources of the world’s largest organizations in a single, simple, powerful Web platform.”
About Plumtree Software
San Francisco-based Plumtree Software, the founder and leader of the corporate portal market, shipped the world’s first corporate portal system in March 1998. Started to develop a “Yahoo! for corporate content,” Plumtree is the originator of the term corporate portal. In February 1999, Plumtree was the first corporate portal vendor to develop an extensible architecture for embedding components of corporate applications and Internet services in the portal as modular building blocks called Plumtree Portal Gadgets(TM). In February 2000, Plumtree was the first corporate portal vendor to release a technology for syndicating these gadgets across business networks. Plumtree’s gadget partners include Documentum, MicroStrategy, Siebel, IBM, Onyx Software and Concur Technologies. Plumtree’s channel partners include Compaq Computer, FutureNext Consulting, Inc., Inforte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Project Performance Corporation, Seranova, and several other leading integrators.
As the world’s most comprehensive portal to corporate information and applications, Plumtree’s flagship Plumtree Corporate Portal is the winner of the Crossroads A-List Award for Information and Application Portals, and of the InfoWorld Corporate Portal product comparison. Plumtree is the only portal product to receive an “A” for Capability from PC Week Labs, and was ranked the leading portal software vendor in a Delphi Group survey of information technology professionals by a margin of three-to-one over its closest competitor. Plumtree’s customers include Procter & Gamble, Ford Motor Company, Chevron Corporation, Motorola, Inc. Network Solutions Sector, Guess?, Andersen Consulting, Ames Department Stores, Staples, U.S. Department of Energy, Comcast Cable Communications and State Street Corporation. To learn more about Plumtree, visit the company’s Web site at www.plumtree.com/main.html , write information@plumtree.com, or register for an on-line seminar held on the first and third Tuesdays of every month at www.plumtree.com/moreinfo/seminars.htm .
