Partnerware CEO Seeks To Sell Off Technology Assets

Partnerware

"We will be selling off [intellectual property in a process that will probably take a few months," Troy told CRN. The company specialized in partner relationship management (PRM) software.

The company's "reinvention" program, in which it rewrote its PRM software for Web services and transitioned from an ASP to a licensed software model "simply ran short on time," Troy said in a statement e-mailed to CRN.

"The product is complete, but the continuing difficult enterprise software sales and financing environment will not allow the company to continue operations," the statement said.

On the block is the J2EE-based PRM product which she said has "very unique capabilities that are worth exploring by the right vendors."

Partnerware had already been through the layoffs that have afficted virtually every high-tech company. A former employee estimated there were fewer than 30 people left on payroll at the time of the closure, from a high two years ago of more than 100.

This source said the company called the remaining workforce together earlier this week to inform them of the shut down.

Troy joined Partnerware, a PRM pioneer, in March 2001, after 21 years at IBM and Tivoli. She replaced founder Eric Hills, who remained as chairman for awhile before leaving the company altogether.

At one point, the company had raised more than $40 million from venture investors including Polaris Ventures, Adams Capital Management, Edgewater Private Equity Fund, Gefinor Ventures and Lucent Venture Partners.

But the transition away from the staggering ASP world and the lack of big customers stymied the effort, observers said.

The company's exit "underscores just how difficult it is for best-of-breed vendors to survive without a deep bench of reference customers to rely on, and a lack of order capture and management expertise," said Louis Columbo, an analyst at AMR Research, in a research note.

This failure, along with Chordiant's acquisition of OnDemand signals that consolidation is now fully underway in PRM, he said.