By Siobhan Kennedy
In a bid to extend its application integration portfolio to the internet, IBM Corp yesterday signed a deal with Extricity Software Inc to resell and distribute its business to business e- commerce integration software. Under the deal, IBM’s sales team will resell Extricity’s flagship product, AllianceSeries, to its customer base, alongside IBM’s existing MQ Series messaging platform.
While MQ Series focuses exclusively on back office integration, messaging and workflow, the deal with Extricity will enable IBM to offer its customers the ability to link their applications to their partners and suppliers via the internet. The next wave of integration is looking outside an enterprise and connecting your company with your suppliers and partners, said Rob Lamb, business unit executive at IBM’s MQSeries division in Hursley, England. This deal with Extricity augments IBM’s strategy by providing the necessary infrastructure and workflow to enable business to business integration.
According to Dave Cope, VP of marketing for Extricity, AllianceSeries is typically used by customers to solve three main integration problems: to integrate front office with supply chain partners; to integrate back office e-commerce systems with suppliers’ systems; and to connect buyers and sellers in on-line marketplaces. Reselling Extricity software means IBM will be the only vendor to offer a complete integration offering including both intra and inter company integration, said Cope.
As part of the agreement, IBM will keep all the revenue from the sales of Extricity’s AllianceSeries integration product in return for paying the company royalty fees on a regular basis, although neither IBM nor Extricity would give any specific details. Cope said the deal would extend Extricity’s reach to IBM’s 7,000 MQ Series customers, their partners and suppliers and any future prospects across multiple geographies. 100% of the Fortune 100 companies use IBM for e-business, Cope said, so it’s terrifically validating for Extricity that IBM’s choosing us after assessing other offerings.
Lamb said that IBM chose to go with Extricity rather than develop its own B2B offering because it wanted to get a product out to market as fast as possible. Clearly we have the skills to do it but it came down to time to market, he said, adding the other companies – notably Microsoft with its BizTalk and Hewlett Packard with eSpeak – are talking a lot about integration but delivering very little. They [Extricity] have a proven product, it actually works, and they have lots of customers that are using the software to communicate and do business with their partners and suppliers.
