i2 Technologies, Inc. recently announced the expansion of its Strategic partnership with IBM. As part of the agreement, i2 and IBM are increasing sales and marketing, implementation services, hosting and development investments to deliver the i2 hosted and subscription-based transportation management solution, i2 FreightMatrix.

i2 FreightMatrix is an internet-based software as a service (SaaS) solution designed to enable companies to procure, plan, execute, monitor and measure freight movements across multiple modes, borders and enterprises. With the rising fuel costs and logistics capacity issues companies are faced with in the current market environment, managing transportation costs has become a top priority.

"Subscription-based pricing, which tends to be linked with SaaS deployment, is growing much faster than traditional pricing in the transportation management systems (TMS) market. On average, TMS vendors predict that 63 percent of their installed customer base will be on-demand by 2011," said Adrian Gonzalez, director, Logistics Executive Council ARC Advisory Group. "IBM's expertise with selling and managing SaaS deployments will enable i2 to scale its FreightMatrix solution and reach a broader customer segment. For IBM, this partnership provides the company with a technology platform to grow its Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services in transportation."

"We have shared several joint transportation engagements with IBM that have resulted in the successful delivery of our solutions to our customer base," said Razat Gaurav, vice president of global transportation solutions, i2. "With our combined assets, IBM and i2 can jointly deliver domain and industry expertise."

IBM's Global Business Services consultants will apply their knowledge of hosting services and transportation best practices to implement the i2 FreightMatrix solution. i2 and IBM will also collaborate on commercial development through both companies' worldwide sales organizations for industries including manufacturing, retail, and third-party logistics providers in both the enterprise and small-medium business markets.

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Prashanth Rai