I2 Joins Business-To-Business Trading Exchange Fray

Supply-chain management software provider i2 TechnologiesInc. said yesterday that it has teamed with Compaq and Hewlett-Packard to create an online business-to-business trading community for the high-tech industry. The site, called HightechMatrix.com, is owned and operated by i2 and provides electronics manufacturers, distributors, and their trading partners the ability to negotiate purchasing and coordinate production plans via a single, secure Web portal.

Greg Brady, president of i2, estimates that with its 72% share of the supply-chain market in the high-tech industry today, i2 could potentially channel $100 billion of trade through HightechMatrix.com. Compaq CEO Michael Capellas said his company is committed to moving the $25 billion of trading it does with suppliers each year onto the high-tech exchange. HP also plans to conduct tens of billions of dollars in commerce with suppliers through the portal. Both companies expect to gain efficiencies, cut costs, and increase customer service by using the online procurement and planning system. Also, i2 will take a percentage of each transaction that moves through its system.

HightechMatrix.com is the first of several industry-specific marketplaces i2 plans to launch as part of TradeMatrix, the software vendor's business-to-business marketplace strategy launched in October. The high-tech marketplace is also an expansion of the trading community that i2 and HP launched earlier this year for electronics distributors. It follows on heals of several recent high-profile marketplace deals made by rivals Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, and Commerce One for the automotive, pharmaceutical, and apparel industries.