Coral8 Gives A Free Ride To IBM RFID Customers
IBM has integrated Coral8 into its WebSphere RFID Information Center product; and Coral8 is providing a free deployment license to all IBM customers using the new version of WebSphere RFID Information Center.
In a similar strategy that Esper and BEA are following, Coral8 believes that a “give away” strategy will help boost their sales and provide new opportunities to sell to IBM’s customers. In addition, Coral8 hopes to leverage their relationship with IBM to sell to other customers.
These new CEP/ESP alliances are interesting. I was expecting companies like BEA, Oracle, SAP and IBM to acquire startups like Esper and Coral8, not embed their software for free. On the other hand, this is a low risk strategy for the larger companies, who can now claim to be players in the CEP market by embedding software from the smaller firms. If the market develops, these larger firms can then make a “build or buy” decision, lowering their risk and exposure.
Who’s next?
Alex Vasseur says:
Sunday, August 12, 2007 at 8:01am
Hi Tim
I think this is slightly different from the EsperTech / BEA OEM agreement as the Coral8/IBM does not seems to be an OEM but is fairly limited in scope. I have commented some more in my (new) blog. Alex
Tim Bass says:
Sunday, August 12, 2007 at 8:21am
Hi Alex,
Thanks for providing more details. Much appreciated!
Yours faithfully, Tim