Collaboration and Partnership – what’s the attraction

Bernard Foot, Strategy Analyst at Payment HSM as a Service provider MYHSM, reflects on what collaborations and partnerships really are and why they are important in delivering products that work for the payments industry.

Just a Platitude?

Looking at the blogs I and my colleagues have written and at our press releases and marketing collateral, it is striking how often the terms “collaboration” and “partnership” turn up. This got me thinking about what the terms really mean and why companies form them – apart from sending out the marketing message that they have powerful friends.

I have seen these terms devalued elsewhere until they become just platitudes. Customers are described as partners, for example. Well, I have a PC – but I’m not a partner of Microsoft or Dell. Of course vendors should have a good relationship with their customers and treat them as more than a source of income. But that doesn’t make them partners.

In a collaboration, both sides contribute and both sides share in the benefits – and in a partnership they also share the risks. They’re 2-way relationships.

Why make the effort?

So why do companies enter these arrangements? Basically, because it gives them power in the marketplace to meet the needs of their customers and, ultimately, to make a profit.

The need for younger organisations to have relationships with established, larger organisations is perhaps easier to understand. MYHSM has only recently established its place in the market and is in the rapid growth phase of all young, successful companies. So our partnerships and collaboration with global giants such as Thales and Equinix and the technical and marketing support we receive from them have been instrumental in our success in getting to market early and being able to address a worldwide customer base. We couldn’t have done it on our own.

But what’s in it for the larger partner? Even the largest organisations just can’t do everything. So for Thales to get a foothold for their payShield HSMs in the cloud, or for Equinix to get a Payment HSM capability in their ecosystem, it’s faster, more cost-effective, and with less risk than trying to do it themselves. Large corporations with deep pockets can buy their way into new areas by acquiring specialist companies. But that’s risky – they have to choose the right target, and run the risk of making competitors of the companies they don’t buy. But if you build relationships, you can make allies of all the companies where there are mutual benefits.

But size isn’t everything. A crucial sector for MYHSM is that of software companies of all sizes who are providing applications to the payments industry. Most of these companies are seeing the push to the cloud from their customers and so are adapting their products for this new environment. MYHSM is important to them so that they can provide their customers with a soup-to-nuts cloud solution. And they are important to MYHSM because they are making us part of their solution and confirming our credibility to their users.

The bottom line

Offhand, I can’t think of any company in the payments industry that is not there to make a profit and that does not need to satisfy the needs of its customers. Collaboration and partnership are the win-win ways to meet both of these goals. And by doing so they provide solutions for payments companies that otherwise might not exist.

To find out more about MYHSM and our services, visit us at www.myhsm.com.