4 Requirements for a Solid Partnership

image credit: Cliff Dwelling

The other day Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft announced the for­ma­tion of a strate­gic alliance to go against IBM, Ora­cle, and oth­ers in the data cen­ter space. The alliance will specif­i­cally focus on help­ing busi­nesses effi­ciently setup and oper­ate their back-room engine.

This arrange­ment — an esti­mated $250 mil­lion invest­ment — is sure to help the part­ners fend off the full inte­gra­tion claims of their rivals, but what can we learn, and more impor­tantly apply, from the venture?

The last two years has changed the rel­a­tive impor­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tive agree­ments, whether they be vast or local in nature. Mar­kets have glob­al­ized, prod­uct life cycles have col­lapsed, and social net­work­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions in gen­eral have emerged as a pow­er­ful equal­iza­tion force. All of the above pro­vide unprece­dented oppor­tu­nity, they also usher in new challenges.

Going for­ward no one can rely on what brought them suc­cess in the past. The key to the next decade and beyond in one’s speed of adop­tion. It is imper­a­tive that one poses flex­i­ble capa­bil­i­ties, a desire to inno­vate, and a will­ing­ness to pre­emp­tively retire a func­tion­ing model.

Clearly the HP/Microsoft deal hopes to score on the adap­tion, flex­i­bil­ity, and inno­va­tion front. But, can we check­off the struc­tural attrib­utes that com­pose a solid alliance? Regard­less of the title — col­lab­o­ra­tive agree­ments, strate­gic part­ner­ships, or strate­gic alliances — they all must meet the fol­low­ing four characteristics:

A com­mon goal:  HP and Microsoft want to cut the cost of set­ting up and run­ning a data cen­ter by sell­ing a fully inte­grated turnkey solu­tion. A solu­tion that uti­lizes all the advanced fea­tures of both the soft­ware and hard­ware. Thus they have a com­mon goal, expand their foothold into the data cen­ter market.

Par­tic­i­pants remain inde­pen­dent:  It is clear that HP isn’t get­ting any Win­dows 7 rev­enue nor is Microsoft cap­tur­ing printer sales.

Ben­e­fits and con­trol is shared:  Each will be bet­ter posi­tioned against a rival — HP ver­sus IBM and Microsoft ver­sus EMC.

Ongo­ing con­tri­bu­tions:  This doesn’t refer to money but  tech­nol­ogy, prod­ucts, and other strate­gic insights. This ven­ture will tightly cou­ple soft­ware and hard­ware, a fin­ger­print of a deep­en­ing inte­gra­tion that can only work with an open line of communication.

This alliance frame­work can work for any­one. So wether you are pur­su­ing a ‘store-within-a-store’ con­cept or a more tra­di­tional sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship make sure you can check off each of the above.

Posted via web from donaldmcmichael’s pos­ter­ous