ICL and Microsoft reach second base

ICL and Microsoft have unveiled the second stage of their global alliance, focusing on business ecommerce, financial markets, smartcards and secure systems.

ICL announced plans to set up five software development centres across the globe, creating 200 jobs. The move will also result in the expansion of the Microsoft training programme, with the creation of 250 new accredited consultants.

ICL claimed it expects to make £1bn from the partnership, which dates back to May 1998, when the companies decided to pool technology and marketing resources.

Gartner Group analyst, Roger Foulton, said: "I have a reasonably positive reaction to the announcement. ICL is placing heavy bets on the Microsoft alliance and, so far, it's been going according to plan. The difficulty they still face is making sure they stay highly focused."

Foulton added that ICL will do well to focus on niche markets, like government and education, and not to try to compete with IBM, particularly in business ecommerce. "IBM is in a different league and its marketing is certainly paying off at the moment, so ICL will have to continue to focus on the niche," he said.

Currently, business ecommerce market share is hard to judge, because the technology is still evolving and hard to classify, according to Jenny Dixon, electronic business marketing manager for ICL. Dixons said ICL's performance in the ebusiness space is particularly difficult to quantify because ICL only measures "pure ebusiness activity".

She added: "Some of our competitors, like IBM, are counting a lot of normal products into their ebusiness figures, which we are not doing."