Also: Microsoft renames midmarket business apps; Sage releases new version of ACT contact management system
As it prepares to consummate its $200 million merger with BEA Systems, Plumtree Software is going ahead with plans to launch a major new version of its portal software at its user conference next month. Plumtree is keeping most of the technical details of its Plumtree 6.0 platform under wraps, but the new version will include native Java and .Net interfaces. Plumtree has struggled for share in a portal market increasingly dominated by applications and middleware giants SAP AG, IBM and Oracle, which often sell portal software as an add-on to customers buying from their broader software stacks.
Microsoft last week renamed its suite of next-generation business applications for the midmarket and reiterated plans to tie them together with Office on the front end and infrastructure software on the back end. The company unveiled Microsoft Dynamics, the evolution of Microsoft’s Project Green. Each of the five Microsoft business applications will be rebranded with the Dynamics name as the products are upgraded on their regular release cycles. The first two will be Great Plains 9.0 and Microsoft CRM 3.0. They will ship by year-end as Dynamics GP and Dynamics CRM. The rest of the release cycle will happen in 2006, with Dynamics AX (formerly Axapta 4.0) set for release before July 1, and Dynamics NAV (formerly Navision 5.0) and Dynamics SL (formerly Solomon 7.0) slated for release before year-end. Observers say Microsoft is playing catch-up with SAP and Oracle to provide business software to the midmarket that is designed around XML and the Web services concept of reusable network services as part business process automation. With Dynamics, Microsoft will release up to 50 role-based interfaces for such Office applications as Outlook, Excel and Word tailored for specific workers from sales executives to warehouse managers.
Sage Software last week released a new version of its ACT contact management software. ACT 2006 adds a number of user-requested features and helps smooth some of the problems associated with the software’s transition to a new architecture. ACT 2006’s back-end changes include synchronization system fixes intended to speed up that process and new integration support for IBM’s Lotus Notes. The software’s interface has been tweaked to let users more easily associate contacts with multiple groups or organizations, and to create hyperlinks when linking contacts to customers. The new version also adds support for a user feature Sage’s executives say is often requested: Automatically printing phone numbers on ACT’s calendars of scheduled calls and meetings. The software costs $230 per user or $150 as an upgrade. ACT Premium 2006 has a $400 list price, or $260 as an upgrade.
