IDC's Software Solutions Alliance Leadership Council service provides alliance and business development executives with the opportunity to drive innovation and better decision making through research and industry collaboration. Through the service, members engage directly with other industry-leading alliance professionals in peer-to-peer problem solving discussions, member-led research, and direct engagement with alliance analysts. This approach provides a unique experience in which alliance professionals can access the analyst resources of IDC, work with other industry professionals to drive a common research agenda, and share best practices in areas that are considered important in the development of industry alliance practices. Highlights of the service include semiannual summits of top industry alliance executives and an ongoing research agenda developed in collaboration with summit attendees. Subscribers to this service receive direct access to IDC's top industry experts, who can supply industry analysis and positioning advice, identify strategic partnering opportunities, assist with speaking to the investment community, provide press quotes, and more.

This service covers the following aspects of software alliances:

• Software alliance trends and analysis
• Business case studies
• Industry best practices in software alliances
• Benchmarking to compare industry progress

Throughout the year, this service will address the following topics:

• The value of software alliances to line of business executives as well as customers
• Key comparative metrics, including software alliance program investment benchmarks and attributable revenue to alliances
• Trends and best practices in software alliance management and development
• Innovation (using alliances to drive innovation and innovative alliance practices)

Our research agenda is developed and refined continually in conjunction with our Software Solutions Alliance Leadership Council. Typical topics include:

1. What are the market forces that affect how alliance executives shape the future direction of software alliances?
2. What are the characteristics of successful alliances?
3. How are companies investing in alliances?
4. How do the alliance practices of companies compare with one another? What lessons are learned?
5. How do leading vendors evaluate the performance of individual alliances and programs?
6. How can companies alliance programs be improved (or their approach to alliances)?
7. How can the industry work together to further improve the quality and performance of alliances as a business driver?

IDC's Software Solutions Alliance Leadership Council service provides a unique forum for discussion, research, and analysis of a broad spectrum of alliance strategies across a wide range of software and services companies. This service identifies the efficacy of these alliance strategies in current markets and the overall partner portfolio. IDC analysts use a quantitative comparison of vendor activities and a qualitative understanding of how new business models are evolving to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of alliance strategies, as well as the partnering requirements, for succeeding with new models. Vendors tracked include:

Accenture, Adobe, Autodesk, Bearing Point, BEA Systems, BMC, Business Objects, CA, Cisco, Citrix, EDS, EMC, Fujitsu Ltd., HP, IBM, Informatica, Intel, McAfee, Microsoft, NEC, Oracle, Progress, Research In Motion, SAP AG, SAS Institute, Siemens PLM, Sun Microsystems, SunGard Data Systems, Sybase and Symantec.

This service focuses on the following core research. In addition to the insight provided in this service, IDC may conduct additional research on specific topics, or emerging market segments, via research offerings that require additional IDC funding and client investment.

This event is a semiannual gathering of clients and key alliance executives for a one-day exchange of ideas, insights, and opportunities on specific topics as agreed upon by the Council members. IDC provides members with event presentations and documents that summarize the salient content of each summit.

These studies will identify and investigate examples of best practices from leading vendors. The principle here is to understand what drives the best practices from a strategic and operational angle .

This document sizes the investments in and revenue attributed to alliances. Allocation of investments and resources across the portfolio of alliance partners and trends in revenue performance are also explored.

This study explores the evolution of alliance KPI's or metrics. It looks at how metrics have been defined and how they are changing related to different alliance types and organizations.

This study provides members with a better understanding of the opportunity for and attributes of attractive SaaS offerings as well as effective alliances strategies to deliver these offerings.

IDC offers a complete market intelligence solution customized to meet your business requirements. The array of products and services available to you includes:

• The opportunity to have your specific questions answered through personal interaction with industry experts who cover the topics and markets in your service
• Around-the-clock access to our market intelligence on idc.com, IDC's personalized Web experience
• A view of the market's future with 12 months of continuous intelligence about its direction and the reasons behind it, along with actionable advice for taking advantage of existing and emerging opportunities
• Special client discount pricing on purchases of research from other services
• Complimentary admission to IDC's annual Directions conference, where you'll hear our latest forecasts and network with IDC analysts and other industry professionals
• Complimentary invitations to monthly executive telebriefings, interactive forums designed to provide you with insights about research and strategies directly from IDC analysts

To find out how our flexible packaging options can meet your specific business needs, please contact your IDC sales executive.

As a privately held company, IDC believes that our customers are our primary constituency. A large percentage of every revenue dollar is reinvested back into our products, including more analysts, more geographic coverage, and extensive primary research.

Our steady growth over the past 10-plus years reflects our commitment to investing in our customers.