PR - Fair Isaac Expands IBM Alliance

Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE: FIC) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced a significantly expanded strategic alliance to create and deliver end-to-end financial services solutions powered by IBM’s open technology to help clients better integrate information across the enterprise. As part of the alliance, Fair Isaac will optimize a new generation of its decision management software on the following IBM middleware: DB2, WebSphere, Rational tools, Lotus software, including Portal, and the IBM System z and System p platforms.

The agreement includes joint development, marketing, and sales of service oriented architecture (SOA)-based financial services solutions. Fair Isaac will lead with IBM Global Business Services on systems integration for clients as part of its shared services delivery model.

Additionally, Fair Isaac will embed and use IBM middleware including WebSphere, DB2, Rational tools and Lotus software as the foundation of its next generation Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) solutions. As a result, financial services clients using Fair Isaac’s new EDM suite, which also contains the industry-leading Blaze Advisor(TM) business rules management system and predictive modeling tool Model Builder, will be able to take advantage of SOA and Information on Demand (IOD) software to share data across multiple applications including account opening, customer and account management, fraud, collections and recovery.

"Financial services organizations are under enormous pressure to make smart, quick decisions to out-maneuver their competition and spur top- and bottom-line growth," said Bernhard Nann, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Fair Isaac. "By combining and optimizing the industry-standard open technologies and solutions from IBM and Fair Isaac, we aim to play a crucial role in helping them succeed."

The decision middleware solutions will be jointly offered by IBM and Fair Isaac, broadening and accelerating the availability of new products and services. Both companies have also made significant commitments to technology development, as well as ongoing technical support for joint clients.

The announcement represents a significant commitment to providing clients with open standards-based solutions that will allow them to leverage their existing IT assets, lower costs and increase flexibility. Building on its existing successful relationship, the expanded alliance tightens the integration between IBM and Fair Isaac across all areas including software, hardware, services, marketing, and joint product development.

"Both Fair Isaac and IBM fully embrace and support SOA to deliver open-standards business applications to any number of users regardless of their existing technology infrastructure," said Mark Hanny, vice president of strategic partnerships, IBM. "Our joint clients can now more easily overcome one of the key challenges of implementing an SOA infrastructure to deliver Information on Demand (IOD) – managing, integrating, and unlocking value from their business information – and become more flexible to better compete globally."