Ford Chooses Plumtree to Transform World's Largest Commercial Intranet Into Dynamic Corporate Portal
12 June 2000
Hub.ford.com Provides Gateway to 300,000 Web Pages, One Million Documents for 200,000 Employees Worldwide
DEARBORN, Mich., and SAN FRANCISCO - Ford Motor Company and corporate portal
market-leader Plumtree Software today announced that Ford has selected the
Plumtree Corporate Portal for an enterprise-wide portal solution for more than
200,000 employees worldwide. Ford's deployment of the software is part of an
initiative to transform hub.ford.com, with 300,000 Web pages the largest
commercial intranet in the world, into a comprehensive, dynamic view of Ford's
business. Ford is replacing the existing hub.ford.com with a personalized
portal that delivers a broad array of information and tools to employees and
management. The portal will also enable Ford to integrate key functionality
from in-house applications and facilitate role-based use of information by
various functional groups within the company.
The multi-tier architecture of the Plumtree Corporate Portal will enable
hub.ford.com to deliver dynamic, personalized content to Ford employees under
peak loads estimated by Ford at 10,000 hits per minute, or 167 hits per
second.
"Hub.ford.com is the center of information and a key enabler of core
business processes at Ford," said Jim Yost, CIO and Ford Motor Company vice
president. "The new Ford Enterprise Portal will dramatically improve
information management and access at Ford, increasing corporate awareness of
our strategies, key messages and brands. Moreover, it will provide quick and
easy access to key business sites and tools, ultimately increasing employee
productivity. The Plumtree Corporate Portal was selected for this mission-
critical initiative because it best maps to Ford's vision of a comprehensive,
enterprise-wide portal to enable strategic content management."
Functional Communities Enable Collaboration Between Employees
Following the initial rollout of the corporate portal, Ford plans to
expand the functionality of hub.ford.com by integrating communities, or sub-
portals. Functional communities within Ford, such as purchasing,
manufacturing and marketing, will develop gadgets tailored to the needs of
employees within each functional area. The sub-portals will provide a
collaboration platform that allows users in functional groups to access the
information and services most relevant to their work -- facilitating project
management, increasing knowledge sharing and strengthening relationships
between employees across organizational boundaries. Moreover, Ford will use
the portal to create and control new intranet sites. As managers register
their sites, personalized data will be captured and delivered to the correct
location within the portal. Personalized user profiles will ensure that the
correct MyPage, intranet sites and gadgets are displayed for each user.
What's in Hub.ford.com? Company and Industry News, Stock Status, Employee
Listing and Contact Information, Local Weather
Hub.ford.com integrates services from Ford intranet sites and the Internet
as Plumtree Portal Gadgets(TM). Similar in appearance to the sports
scoreboard or stock portfolio of a consumer portal, Plumtree Portal Gadgets
are plug-in components that embed views of enterprise applications and
interactive Internet services in a personalized portal page. Ford employees
choose from a menu of gadgets to build a personalized view of the Ford
business. Hub.ford.com's gadgets offer a wide variety of corporate services,
including:
* XML feeds to real-time Ford and industry news sources;
* A current listing of the Ford Motor Company stock;
* A searchable directory of more than 300,000 Web pages, allowing
employees access to Ford and job related information;
* Access to benefit and retirement information, employee vehicle programs
and managers toolbox;
* Access to healthcare-management information;
* An up-to-date listing of Ford employees and their contact information;
and
* Local weather status according to individual users' locations.
"At an enterprise as large as Ford, information access and management is
always a challenge," said Plumtree Software CEO John Kunze. "Ford has a
history of technology accomplishment, and we are proud that it selected the
Plumtree Corporate Portal as the platform to provide personalized, relevant
information to Ford employees around the world -- a distinct competitive
advantage."
Additional Benefits: Advanced Search, Single Point of Access
The taxonomy and filtering available in the Plumtree Corporate Portal will
allow Ford to offer employees enhanced search capabilities. Employees will be
able to initiate advanced searches of the more than one million documents
stored worldwide. Advanced search capabilities will process highly targeted
search requests and deliver streamlined, relevant results, increasing employee
efficiency.
Ford employees will benefit from the simplicity of Plumtree's single point
of access, which integrates with Ford's existing LDAP security directory of
more than 150,000 users, verifying each user's name and password to create a
secure user account automatically. Upon login to hub.ford.com, each user will
see key intranet sites and application content relevant to his or her work at
Ford. In addition, the sign-on profile will register each user's geographical
location so that the portal can display corresponding regional information,
such as weather.
About Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Co. is the world's largest producer of trucks and the second-
largest producer of cars and trucks combined, marketing and selling
approximately 7 million vehicles globally through its seven brands last year.
Ford Motor Co. employs approximately 345,000 people in plants, offices and
laboratories to serve consumers in more than 200 countries and territories.
Ford Motor Co. is also one of the largest providers of financial services
worldwide through Ford Credit and related businesses. Ford Motor Co. provides
consumers and commercial financial services through 2,400 branches in 33
countries.
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 Ford Motor Company, Procter
& Gamble, Chevron Corporation, Motorola, Inc. Network Solutions Sector,
GUESS?, Anderson Consulting, Ames Department Stores, Staples, U.S. Department
of Energy, Comcast Cable Communications and State Street Corporation.
