Ariba (ARBA:Nasdaq - news) executives are putting together contingency plans in case the company's partnership with i2 Technologies (ITWO:Nasdaq - news) and IBM (IBM:NYSE - news) falls apart, according to one industry analyst and two financial analysts.
"Ariba has been fairly open recently that although the partnership plays well in the marketplace, they're not going to bank the future of the company on it, and they shouldn't," says Eric Upin, an analyst at Robertson Stephens who rates Ariba a buy. "Software partnerships are almost never forever." (His firm hasn't done underwriting for Ariba.)
Ariba, i2 and IBM have boldly played up their partnership, launched in March, as the dream team of B2B, dubbing it "the Alliance" with a capital A. They backed it with a $90 million advertising campaign this summer to promote the partnership as the key operator of Internet marketplaces, where companies can buy and sell things online. Along the way, the Alliance landed at least 25 customers, something the partners haven't been shy about sharing with the world.
But quietly, fissures began appearing. Ariba and i2 landed one customer without IBM. i2 announced a partnership with BroadVision (BVSN:Nasdaq - news), which has targeted Ariba's business. Meanwhile, Ariba has landed deals with IBM that excluded i2. The companies say these deals exhibit the Alliance's flexibility. But all this provoked speculation about the Alliance's life span, as observers began to believe that Ariba and i2 were increasingly becoming competitors, with IBM being the peacemaker in the middle. |
