Plumtree has appointed five new members to its Asia-Pacific region management team, all previous Network Associates (NA) executives.

Former senior vice president of Network Associates Asia Pacific, Dean Mansfield will head Plumtree in the region as managing director.

Dean Stockwell joined the company as Australia New Zealand regional director to drive the subsidiary's strategic direction and manage software licence and service revenues. He was regional director of professional services at Network Associates and McAfee Software for five years.

Peter Wilson and Chris Hughes join the US-based portal platform developer as area sales managers, while Vicki Baines has been named as regional channels director.

According to Stockwell, what appears to be an executive exodus from the antivirus software vendor was "certainly not a team thing," but a series of departures based very much on personal choice "for all".

Stockwell, who founded the Australian arm of Plumtree in December when the company was in raw start-up mode, said: "What you'll find in the IT industry in particular is that people work so much better in teams."

The three-year old Plumtree's US clients include Ford Motor Company, Proctor and Gamble, K-Mart, Boeing, Dun and Bradstreet, BP, Chevron and Thomas Cook. Its first Australian customer is law firm Blake Dawson and Waldron.

Plumtree Asia Pacific will announce plans later this year to work with the local subsidiaries of existing US customers such as Ford, and is eyeing both large and small to medium enterprises in the region, a company spokesperson said.

Stockwell will concentrate on partnering with big global IT players like Microsoft, into whose .NET software services strategy he said Plumtree fit nicely.

Plumtree has around 60 systems integrators including PricewaterhouseCoopers and Compaq Computer, which integrate portal applications and content from vendors like Business Objects, IBM, Microsoft, SAP and Siebel Systems.