Anaheim, CA April 29, 2002 e-Business giant IBM will provide the nuts, bolts and services necessary to help companies deploy Ariba's Spend Management Suite under an alliance announced today at Ariba's LIVE 2002 user conference.
Ariba also announced plans to use IBM's DB2 Universal Database as the primary UNIX development platform for the Spend Management suite.
The two solution providers initially partnered in March 2000, and the companies reasserted their alliance at last May's LIVE event, when IBM, among other moves, unveiled a suite of procurement services to be delivered through the e-procurement platform provided by Ariba.
Under the latest agreement, IBM will provide its software, hardware and middleware, as well as implementation and hosting services to help companies build and deploy the Spend Management Suite in their organizations.
Ariba has staked its future on the enterprise spend management (ESM), a strategy to offer companies solutions that help them identify and realize cost savings through better management of the enterprise's total spend, including direct, indirect, contract workforce and travel and entertainment costs.
"ESM is a rapidly growing and critical new component of enterprise software," said Phil Pierangeli, vice president for the IBM-Ariba alliance at IBM. "We've seen increasing demand from companies who need to quickly assess their spending situation and make the necessary changes to gain real savings."
Explaining the reasoning behind the DB2 announcement, Michael Schmitt, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Ariba, said: "A powerful database platform is fundamental for developing and deploying a powerful ESM solution. We believe the Ariba Spend Management Suite, running on DB2, will provide the flexibility and choice of operating environments."
In addition to the IBM DB2 Universal Database, Ariba says it currently plans to have a variety of Ariba products support a range of IBM technology, including xSeries and pSeries servers, the AIX operating system and the WebSphere software platform.
Ariba and IBM said they have more than 30 joint customers, including 3M, Amtrak and Saks.
