Plumtree Software Inc. on Wednesday will announce a new version of its portal platform that adds more advanced Web services capabilities.
The new version, 4.5WS, builds on the Web services support first in-troduced in version 4.5 of the Plumtree Corporate Portal. It will be announced at the companys Web Services and Portals Executive Event in New York.
While the old version enabled remote search engines to connect to the portal via HTTP and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), 4.5WS allows the addition of applications and content as Web services as well as the im-porting of users from external directories.
Customers will be able to run all four types of portal components—Gadget Web Services for applications, Crawler Web Services for content, Search Web Services for search and Authentication Web Services for adding new users—on different platforms and networks, so they can integrate all of their systems in one portal and integrate new services at any time without retesting the entire system for conflicts between the services, Plumtree officials said.
All Web services are SOAP-based and connect to the portal via HTTP.
In addition to the new integrated Web services capabilities, search has been enhanced in this version to speed content indexing and automatically discard old content and broken links, said officials with the San Francisco company said.
Plumtree Corporate Portal Server 4.5WS is available May 24, with an upgrade kit shipping July 1. Pricing ranges from $150 to $600 per user depending on level of functionality purchased.
In other portal news, Sun Microsystems Inc. on Monday announced a partnership with Yahoo Inc. that will add personalized business information and content from Yahoo to Suns Sun ONE Portal Server (formerly iPlanet Portal Server).
Under terms of the deal, Sun ONE Portal Server customers will receive a free 120-day trial period with pre-integrated “instant-on” access to more than 2,000 content sources, from 25 countries, in 13 languages, through Yahoos My Yahoo! Enterprise Edition.
Portal administrators will be able to control the look and feel of the Yahoo portlets to preserve corporate branding, as well as create model accounts that lock portlets on the portal page. Users will be able to customize their own Yahoo content.
The joint offering will be available in the third quarter.