An August 24, 2004 press release from Plumtree Software, Inc. caught my attention: Plumtree Unveils Nine Customer Case Studies; ROI Ranges From 564% on One Deployment to $4 Million on Another.

Plumtree, a leading enterprise portal provider, details a total of nine case studies in its "No Empty Portals" white paper (free download, registration required).  FTN Financial reported the 564% ROI, Ford Motor company reported a savings of $4 million per year in communications, mail, and distributions costs; and Best Buy projected a 3-year ROI of several million dollars in increased sales revenue.

The white paper explains the evolution of the portal industry. Portals first supplied a single place to access all the content and services users needed to do their work, then expanded with additions such as integrated collaboration, content management, and search capabilities. But portals now are evolving into an application framework for integrating services from separate base applications, often running on different platforms. These new "service-oriented" or "composite" applications provide seamless solutions to business needs of their users.

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