Stan Beer
Sunday, 17 September 2006 06:01
IT Industry -
Strategy
IBM will take an equity stake in online learning technology company HarvestRoad (ASX:HRD) in what HarvestRoad calls a worldwide market teaming agreement with market leader IBM.
As part of the arrangement, IBM will take an
undisclosed equity stake in HarvestRoad and the two organisations will
establish a worldwide marketing and sales strategy for the
commercialisation of the HarvestRoad Hive application as an integral
part of the IBM Open Learning Framework.
HarvestRoad Managing Director, Grame Barty, commenting on the
arrangement, said “Both companies will work through the IBM sales
organisation to launch the Education Solution to the worldwide client
base. Together we will work to recruit and educate global business
partners and work closely with existing partners in the USA and Europe.
“HarvestRoad Hive is one of the world’s leading learning object
repository applications and its selection as part of IBM’s market
offering and strategy is a vindication of our efforts to create
software which meets the next generation of requirements for education
delivery services. Our software supports the philosophy of the IBM Open
Learning Framework which focuses on interoperability between systems
and solutions to foster consumer choice.”
“This is a significant opportunity for the Company.” Mr Barty said,
“Having developed a very advanced and marketable product, we have a
great opportunity to work with IBM to commercialise in a very effective
manner.”
Mr Barty noted that this approach is the first major step in the newly
focused strategic commercialisation phase of the Company’s development.
“We aim to create these alliances, preferably cemented with equity
commitments, to gain access to organisations which exercise control and
influence over major world-scale market share in our key application
segments. This one represents our commitment to the worldwide education
market and our means of access.”
“We intend to use this access model in other key markets, such as
publishing and notably defence/aerospace, an area in which we have been
building relationships and expertise for some years. For each business
application area, as our products become fully featured we will seek to
embark upon a marketing and sales alliance which will provide growing
access to major international customer bases,” Mr Barty said.