During my whirlwind tour of North Dallas, I was lucky enough to be able to meet with both Sarinder Chhabra (Senior Vice President) and Manish Govil (Program Manager) of i2 Technologies to talk about what i2 has been up to lately and where they are going.
I’m sure many of you still consider i2 to be the gold-ring exclusive services provider to the top ten or top twenty aerospace, automotive, high tech, and chemical providers, with deep service offerings beyond your needs and capabilities, and price tags to match, but that’s the i2 of old. Having conquered best in class, they realized that they only had two options for growth: conquer new verticals or address a larger market-space. New verticals would be a great start, and their generic process solutions could be customized to the needs of just about any vertical, but the real market lies in the mid-market, where most companies reside. Therefore, they decided to entirely re-architect their software and solution offerings to address the needs of small and large alike! And it sounds like they got it right.
The following are seven key points that I took away from my discussions.
- They’ve re-architected all of their modules and major sub-modules as Service-Oriented Architecture enabled components and developed a new AGILE business platform that allows them to integrate just the components you need.
- They’ve enhanced their technology architecture to include best of breed third-party products, such as Endeca’s (acquired by Oracle) search technology and Denso’s OEM catalogue.
- They have embraced Software as a Service principles and will offer hosted solutions or managed services as well as event-based offerings.
- They have been working hard on a next generation supply management solution that integrates the software and services you need to be successful.
- They have been actively creating and embracing partnerships, and will happily work with complimentary providers to provide you a full suite of connected and integrated products to give you an end-to-end solution for whatever part of the supply chain you are attacking.
- They have been working hard to translate their broad in depth knowledge base of industry best practices into generic processes that can be built into your configured software solution.
- They have been working hard to transform from a software provider to a solution provider – to offer you the services, be it generic software, custom software, consulting services, or managed services, in-house or through partnerships – you need to succeed.
I look forward to diving into some of their new offerings in the near future.