New agreement for IBM and Dassault Systemes.

IBM and Dassault Systemes have announced a expansion of their 25-year partnership. Under the terms of the new agreement, both IBM and DS increase the scope of their responsibilities, with IBM selling DS's expanded portfolio of PLM solutions, and DS assuming management of the PLM indirect sales channel. Under the new agreement IBM will sell a broader portfolio of DS solutions to include ENOVIA MatrixOne and DELMIA, in addition to CATIA, ENOVIA VPLM and ENOVIA SmarTeam. The agreement has been designed to build upon and complement DS's existing direct sales and indirect channel resources for ENOVIA MatrixOne and DELMIA, effective January 2007. This allows IBM to expand its coverage of selected accounts and to better target the high tech, semi-conductor and utilities markets, where there is strong demand for PLM offerings. IBM PLM is dedicated to the sale of DS's PLM software.--DS will increase the scope of its management of the PLM indirect sales channels. Under the new agreement, the transition is in two phases, with DS continuing to expand its role as channel management provider on behalf of IBM, and then assuming direct responsibility for it as a value added reseller channel. This transition, which is being implemented on a country by country basis, began in 2005, as previously announced, and is expected to be completed by early 2008. Countries currently being transitioned include Korea, the UK and the USA. Within the context of IBM's and DS's shared vision of end-to-end PLM, DS V5 solutions fully take advantage of the SOA architecture, as well as IBM middleware, hardware and services.