IBM has teamed up with Ufida to help the Chinese software house expand internationally.
Beijing-based Ufida is hardly a household name outside of China but it is almost 20 years old and claims to be the country's largest enterprise software company with more than 50 branch offices in China, HK and Japan.
Its customer base includes multinational corporations from developed countries, Japan- and HK-based SMEs and numerous China customers with overseas operations.
Ufida now hopes to tap into IBM's global network of R&D, and sales and marketing experts to help grow its business outside of China. For example, IBM and UFIDA are currently working together to sell its application software to a Japanese customer in Tokyo.
IBM provided the initial sales connection and is helping UFIDA localise and port its software for Japan.
IBM has also helped Ufida migrate its product line from its traditional dependence on Microsoft's .NET technology to open software development standards like J2EE.
IBM argues that proprietary software like .NET hinders the ability of businesses like Ufida to sell in global markets because of IT, government and language restrictions.
The rivalry betwween IBM and Microsoft goes back several decades, and while IBM has retreated from many software markets, it still clashes with Microsoft in middleware -- the glue that comes between operating systems and applications software.
The debate about whether J2EE or .NET is the better middleware approach is probably too arcane for most EngagingChina readers, so we will not go there.
The real take-home from this story is that Ufida sees a growing international market for its Made-in-China software and is not affraid to use western technical and marketing skills to help in that expansion.
We last wrote about Ufida here
