Streetline Inc. has been selling its parking-sensor technology for only a year and it has just 30 employees, but International Business Machines Corp. is depending on it and hundreds of young start-ups like it to reach ambitious financial targets.
By 2015, IBM expects to add about $30 billion to its 2010 revenue of $99.9 billion, a challenging goal considering it grew its annual sales by around $10 billion over the past decade.
To get there it is relying on relationships with venture capitalists and start-ups to find promising technologies within four growth areas: emerging markets, business analytics, cloud computing and what IBM calls “smarter planet,” which focuses on using digital intelligence to make processes like city traffic run efficiently. Some of these partnerships will eventually turn into acquisitions.
Now Streetline–which this year raised $15 million from Fontinalis Partners LLC, RockPort Capital Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures–works with someone from IBM every couple of days, said Zia Yusuf, Streetline’s chief executive. ….
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