Tempe, AZ October 23, 2001 Hewlett-Packard and i2 Technologies today announced a co-marketing agreement under which the computer company and the supply chain software provider will offer their enterprise customers a "one-stop" solution for creating a private online marketplace and for managing their supplier relationships.
Private marketplaces give companies the ability to work online with their suppliers to reduce overall inventory costs and promote visibility throughout the supply chain. Supplier relationship management (SRM) enables companies and their suppliers to collaborate to design and manufacture products faster.
Under the agreement announced today, the two companies will offer Dallas-based i2's supply chain collaboration and SRM applications running on HP infrastructure as the foundation for an enterprise's private marketplace. "It's a go-to-market strategy that's targeted at providing customers with an easy, one-stop shop for private marketplace and supplier relationship solution needs," said Nigel Ball, vice president and general manager of the e-Services Partner Division at Hewlett-Packard.
As part of the agreement, the two companies say they have committed resources to develop solution centers and establish joint selling and delivery models. Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP also will deliver financing, support, hosting and implementation services for these solutions.
At the same time, Hewlett-Packard will use i2's supply chain collaboration software to set up its own private marketplace. The companies will use the experience and expertise gained from this implementation, which is just getting underway, to the benefit of their shared enterprise customers, according to Ball. "By using that expertise, we can help reduce the risk to that customer in terms of their implementation and accelerate the time that it takes for them to derive benefit from this type of solution offering," he said.
The two companies have a relationship stretching back almost eight years, and the new agreement will build on that long-standing relationship, according to Ball, who noted that the majority of i2's installed base of supply chain management (SCM) implementations are running on an HP platform.
Also as part of the expanded relationship between the two companies, i2 has agreed to standardize its solutions on HP's OpenView software as the monitoring component for i2-certified platforms running UNIX and Windows.
In addition, the two companies will be leveraging an agreement signed in August enabling HP to host and operate i2 enterprise solutions for dynamic value chain management. HP is an authorized hosting provider for i2 in both North America and Europe.
HP and i2 will target their marketing efforts at customers in the automotive, industrial, retail and high-tech industries, "where the need to collaborate with suppliers is very important," said Darryll Dewan, senior vice president for strategic channels at i2.
Commenting on the HP-i2 announcement today, Karen Peterson, research director for technology consultancy Gartner, said the agreement particularly HP's use of i2 technology for its private exchange represented a vote of confidence for i2, which last week reported a $5.53 billion third-quarter loss, primarily resulting from a $4.7 billion write-off stemming from its March 2000 acquisition of Aspect Development.
Peterson noted that HP had announced in May a deal with Germany's SAP to offer joint supply chain and supplier management solutions. "The most interesting piece of this is that HP is going to use i2 instead of SAP for this functionality," Peterson said. "This is kind of i2 getting its foot back in the door there."
On the other hand, Peterson said that today's announcement was notable from Hewlett-Packard's perspective because it represented a move by the computer company into providing application implementation services. "It remains to be seen if they have the competency of understanding business processes," Peterson said, "because that's really necessary for implementing an application such as i2's supplier relationship management application."
For its part, i2 will benefit from access to HP's local sales force and from the ability to focus on delivering a solution in conjunction with a major partner like HP, according to Dewan. "In order to really fine-tune a footprint and a solution, and to gain the kind of success we want in the marketplace ... you have to have a tight solution," he said. "You have to have a whole lot of trust and confidence that we're going to help each other. It enables us to go to market faster with a credible message."
Also Tuesday, i2 announced an extended relationship with IBM under which the latter's database application, DB2, will be i2's preferred data management platform for AIX. i2 also will resell the DB2 family. The two companies have been working together since 1998.
Rounding out its news for this week, i2 is set to unveil version 5.2 upgrades to its solutions during a Webcast on Thursday, October 25. "i2 Five.Two is designed to help businesses improve value chain efficiencies and slash operating expenses, detect and respond to supply and demand needs in real time, collaborate with trading partners to maximize profits, and reduce the complexities of value chain integration," the solution provider promised in announcing the Webcast.
i2 has been in the spotlight because of its poor earnings report last week, but the company remains financially viable, according to a research alert from technology consultancy AMR Research. "The company has a strong balance sheet," AMR analysts wrote in the note, released on Monday. "i2 remains the acknowledged thought leader in SCM."
