Caterpillar Inc. and i2 Technologies, Inc. announced a comprehensive strategic alliance to help transform Caterpillar's supply chain, logistics, planning, and customer management business processes. Caterpillar will create an e-marketplace using the i2 TradeMatrixT platform to link Caterpillar with its supplier and dealer base, and create a high velocity, optimized, built-to-order environment. They announced the alliance at Planet 2000, San Diego, CA, the world's largest B2B e-business conference. The goal of the initiatives is to drive costs out of Caterpillar's business operations through faster product introduction cycles, more efficient design collaboration with suppliers, improved inventory management, and more cost effective ordering and fulfillment processes. The two companies will create a private e-marketplace for enhancing collaboration between Caterpillar and its dealers and suppliers. In addition, i2 acquired certain Caterpillar software for component procurement and sourcing, and intends to integrate it into the i2 TradeMatrix solution. Caterpillar also licensed an extensive suite of i2 software to optimize their internal operations.