The Atlanta, Georgia-based company said it was taking the relationship to a new strategic level.
The two companies will expand their collaboration efforts to implement supply chain management system for retail, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing and transportation firms worldwide.
Both companies will also ramp up their joint sales initiatives in Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East to close new business. They have already engaged in numerous joint sales initiatives in North America.
Manhattan is hoping to tap into IBM’s global sales and marketing channels and strong service capabilities to push its supply chain offerings to market.
As part of the agreement, Manhattan will also optimize its technology to run on IBM’s hardware and software infrastructure including its Websphere Application Server and Message Broker technology and Transformation Extender technologies that will now become a core part of Manhattan’s integrated planning and logistics applications.
Manhattan has been an IBM channel partner for a decade and half, and both companies share approximately 1,000 customers.
They have been jointly developing supply chain systems at IBM’s Innovation centers in California and Massachusetts.
Both Manhattan and IBM are looking to grab a bigger share of the global supply chain market that is pegged by IT research firm Gartner to top $5.4bn this year.
In a parallel announcement, IBM has said it has also truck a partnership with Beijing-based UFIDA Software Co Ltd, China’s
largest software maker with a similar goal of pushing its hardware and software technologies into new markets like Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore.
Up to now UFIDA’s U8 ERP software for SMBs ran exclusively in Microsoft’s technology stack. That will now change as IBM makes more development and sales resources available to the firm.
Earlier this week UFIDA also struck a partnership with US business intelligence software firm Applix Inc as part of the latter’s international expansion program.
