IBM takes equity stake in HarvestRoad

Stan Beer
Sunday, 17 September 2006 07:01

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.

• Announcements

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.