SANTA CLARA, Calif.—A co-marketing alliance announced last September between Agilent Technologies and Accelrys designed to sell complementary informatics products and ELNs to the life sciences markets, deepened in early March with an OEM agreement that will provide of an embedded version of Accelrys' SciTegic Pipeline Pilot with Agilent's OpenLAB software.
"There are many opportunities of embedding each other's software and this is just the first chapter," says Francois Mandeville, M&A partnership business manager with Agilent. "This was something both parties have contemplated and we knew it would be an extension [of the marketing agreement] as our teams worked together to integrated each other's technologies."
While the value-added reseller and co-marketing agreement last fall provides an avenue for both parties to actively sell and represent the products of the partner company, the new deal—literally and figuratively—goes deeper. In this case, instead of customers choosing to purchase both OpenLAB and a version of Pipeline Pilot that easily integrate with each other. In this case, customers could choose to purchase OpenLAB with all the data analysis and reporting of Pipeline Pilot already embedded in the OpenLAB software.
"Getting the functionality of Pipeline Pilot will be an option within OpenLAB," notes Mandeville. "It is like 'Intel inside' where customer will get the capabilities of both of the companies, but they will not necessarily know that many of the function are being driven by the Pipeline Pilot technology."
For both companies, this agreement appears to be the starting gate and not the finish line.
"The recent OEM agreement with Agilent allows us to continue to enhance the broad range of scientific business intelligence solutions to our chemical and pharmaceutical customers and introduce SciTegic Pipeline Pilot into Agilent markets including laboratory informatics, QA/QC and manufacturing," says Mark J. Emkjer, president and CEO, Accelrys, in a statement announcing the deal.
Plans are already in the works for the companies to add other products to the OEM agreement, though Mandeville is not divulging which products might fall under an OEM arrangement next.
"What I can tell you is that at the core of the relationship are a few key technologies such as our Kalabie ELN, OpenLAB, GeneSpring and Pipeline Pilot and the Accord cheminformatics platform from Accelrys," Mandeville notes. "The two companies are working on various permutations of these products to develop them as building blocks for secondary data analysis."
"There are many opportunities of embedding each other's software and this is just the first chapter," says Francois Mandeville, M&A partnership business manager with Agilent. "This was something both parties have contemplated and we knew it would be an extension [of the marketing agreement] as our teams worked together to integrated each other's technologies."
While the value-added reseller and co-marketing agreement last fall provides an avenue for both parties to actively sell and represent the products of the partner company, the new deal—literally and figuratively—goes deeper. In this case, instead of customers choosing to purchase both OpenLAB and a version of Pipeline Pilot that easily integrate with each other. In this case, customers could choose to purchase OpenLAB with all the data analysis and reporting of Pipeline Pilot already embedded in the OpenLAB software.
"Getting the functionality of Pipeline Pilot will be an option within OpenLAB," notes Mandeville. "It is like 'Intel inside' where customer will get the capabilities of both of the companies, but they will not necessarily know that many of the function are being driven by the Pipeline Pilot technology."
For both companies, this agreement appears to be the starting gate and not the finish line.
"The recent OEM agreement with Agilent allows us to continue to enhance the broad range of scientific business intelligence solutions to our chemical and pharmaceutical customers and introduce SciTegic Pipeline Pilot into Agilent markets including laboratory informatics, QA/QC and manufacturing," says Mark J. Emkjer, president and CEO, Accelrys, in a statement announcing the deal.
Plans are already in the works for the companies to add other products to the OEM agreement, though Mandeville is not divulging which products might fall under an OEM arrangement next.
"What I can tell you is that at the core of the relationship are a few key technologies such as our Kalabie ELN, OpenLAB, GeneSpring and Pipeline Pilot and the Accord cheminformatics platform from Accelrys," Mandeville notes. "The two companies are working on various permutations of these products to develop them as building blocks for secondary data analysis."
