IBM and Retalix team up to deliver joint hardware, software and services to convenience and petroleum retailers.IBM and Retalix, which provides retail
and distribution systems, are partnering to offer combined solutions to
convenience and petroleum retailers.
The two companies announced the agreement May 5 at the NACStech convenience
industry conference in Dallas.
"Retalix has complementary set of tools and software that works well with
IBM hardware, services and capabilities,"
said Juhi Jotwani, director of marketing strategy for retail store solutions
for IBM. "We will work together on
joint offerings for petroleum and convenience retailers."
Under the terms of the partnership, the companies will jointly market and
implement technology solutions based on Retalix software and IBM
hardware and services. Jotwani said convenience and petroleum retailers will be
able to manage Retalix software and IBM
hardware and systems management capabilities with same set of tools.
Click here to read about IBM's self-checkout solutions.
Ray Carlin, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Retalix,
said the agreement is an expansion of a partnership that was initially launched
in January and recently included a deal to sell the Retalix StoreNext solution
for small grocery and convenience retailers on an IBM
hardware platform.
"Because of our collaboration at the technical level, we can provide
remote support at the hardware and software level," Carlin said. "For
convenience retailers, who don't have a lot of resources at the store level,
functionality at the central level becomes more important. IBM
has an excellent shed of hardware products."
According to Rob Garf, an analyst with AMR
Research, the partnership represents a few interesting happenings in the retail
technology space.
"First, this deal will help IBM go
further downmarket, where StoreNext is known and has a pretty broad
distribution network," Garf said. "Second, it speaks more to IBM's
continued focus on hardware, infrastructure and services, and less to its
historical core market of point-of-sale software. And third, the combination
gives convenience store operators, most of which are franchised or
mom-and-pops, more choice in the marketplace."
Garf said the partnership may raise questions about the relationship between
Retalix and Fujitsu, which have historically partnered on the software and
hardware supporting the StoreNext solution.
"What does the future hold for these two?" he asked.
The joint solutions will include IBM POS
hardware and convenience-industry-specific Retalix software applications to
handle tasks such as POS and store
back-office management, fuel and commercial fuel management, central price
management, demand analytics, and loyalty and promotions optimization.
Dan Berthiaume covers
the retail space for eWEEK. For more industry news, check out eWEEK.com's Retail Site.
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