Strategic Partnerships
At Marriott Consulting, we have seen the value of strategic partnerships in an organization's success. We think they are so important that an extensive survey of current and potential partnerships is a significant part of our research for clients.
In most cases, organizations use strategic partnerships to obtain product components or corporate services more efficiently than if they provided them in-house. But some companies use strategic partnerships for other reasons: to test new markets before committing to entry, or to obtain critical know-how from companies with whom they may later choose to compete.
Examples of both of these alternative strategies are contained in this story about BEA Systems, a high-tech maker of computer software that allows other software to share information, even between companies. Take a look at the story on the C-Net site.
It's something to think about when you consider entering a strategic partnership, either as the instigator or as a participant.
Excerpts:
"BEA Systems has been friendly of late. Eventually, it may become a little too friendly for its partners, say analysts, who think the software maker is employing a Trojan horse strategy to eventually compete with its allies.
"Last week at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, BEA announced partnerships with Computer Associates, WebMethods, PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems, to name a few. And this week BEA executives are in Europe meeting with analysts and customers and announcing more partnerships. "A few years from now, those arrangements may be seen as the beginning of an expansion into new areas–areas that are currently occupied by those very partners. "'We believe these new partnerships are stopgap measures until BEA makes a decision to eventually buy or build the technology themselves in the future," said Credit Suisse First Boston analyst Wendell Laidley."