SINGAPORE — i2 Technologies, Inc., a provider of supply chain and market place services, has formed an alliance with SESAMi Inc., a B2B e-commerce service provider operating the SESAMi.NET e-market place in Asia, to drive e-procurement and collaborative commerce in the region.
The six-year partnership will see SESAMi resell i2’s TradeMatrix platform and the latter’s SCM, CRM and SRM (supplier relationship management) solutions. SESAMi will market these solutions and grant sub-licenses throughout Greater China, Cambodia, India, Laos, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.
SESAMi will also become a technology implementer and certification/education center for i2. i2 customers will also have access to SESAMi.NET, and hosting services that SESAMi will provide.
SESAMi.NET, with its more than 1,000 subscribers of various sizes, will be powered by i2’s TradeMatrix solutions. Company officials said the partnership will “further enhance SESAMi’s stature in the SCM space and is expected to allow i2 to leverage SESAMi’s blue-chip client base and pan-Asia reach.” Such blue-chip customers include SingTel, the Swire Group and Eastman Chemical.
According to Raymond Teh, i2’s president for the Asia Pacific region, the U.S.-based company is forecasting a significant portion of revenue generating in the region to come directly or indirectly from the alliance with SESAMi, and that it expects to announce key customer wins “very soon.”
“As a direct result of the alliance with SESAMi, we see a 20 percent increase in revenue generated by license fees for FY 2001 in Asia South and Greater China,” he said, adding that the increase was due in part to greater focus and a shorter sales cycle because of facilitated access to SESAMi’s blue chip accounts.
Even without the 20 percent revenue growth resulting from the SESAMi alliance, which translates to about US$10.5 million, i2 is already expecting to see a 75 percent revenue hike of about US$105 million in FY 2001 (i2 in Asia Pacific registered US$60 million in revenue for FY 2000). The regions contributing to APAC coffers include Asia South, Greater China, Korea and Australia/New Zealand.
According to Teh, i2 generates revenue from license fees, subscription fees, education/services, hosting fees, implementation services and facilities management fees. He added that the reseller agreement with SESAMi is but a “very small piece” of the larger pie that both companies hope to capture; he foresees the revenue-sharing agreement covering the other areas of revenue generation from the second year of partnership onward.
“This is the first time we’re doing this in a major way, the first time the breadth and depth of the product is being represented. There’s only one other ASP-style partnership on such a scale, and that is with IBM in the U.S.,” he added.
Added SESAMi’s president Poh Mui Hoon, “A very significant part of SESAMi’s revenue will be from the collaboration with i2. We have formed a strategic accounts team to target shareholder accounts and blue chip accounts, and we are working with i2 to sell its Pronto solutions to mid-tier customers of SESAMi.NET.”
