Whether using a credit card to make ERP payments, buying concert tickets or settling car park charges with the mobile phone - Singapore company Systems@Work (www.sysatwork.com) provides the applications that lie behind many of these innovative payment solutions. And these, in turn, ride on a partnership that has enabled Systems@Work to deliver payment solutions that "do not just do the job, but do it the right way all the time", says the company's Chief Executive Officer Mr Ng Fook Sun.

Mr Ng: At the end of the day, both sides need to be clear why they are in the partnership.

Mr Ng is referring to Systems@Work's partnership with Sun Microsystems (www.sun.com.sg), which was established four years ago under the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore's (IDA) infocomm Local Industry Upgrading Programme (iLIUP). ILIUP is part of IDA's efforts to create opportunities for infocomm local enterprises (iLEs) and leading industry companies to collaborate and innovate. Under iLIUP, multinational corporations partner iLEs to develop solutions and generate their own intellectual property which they can bring to the world market. It also helps iLEs to build new capabilities in innovative emerging technologies to stay competitive in the global market.

Systems@Work's business applications are developed on Sun's Java platform and delivered to its customers as an integrated stack of technologies.

For example, it runs a payment gateway that helps route transactions between the merchants and the banks. One of its clients is Comfort Taxi, which uses the payment gateway to route credit card transactions made by the passengers in its taxis to the backend in order to process for consolidated settlement and reconciliation.

Other customers, such as Sistic, use solutions from Systems@Work to support their online transactions - running their payment gateway for processing of payments from their call centre and website.

System@Work provides a wide range of payment applications including its Telemoney mobile payment solution.

Systems@Work also builds other customised applications on top of the payment gateway. A recent example is the auto-payment of ERP charges from the credit card, which was announced by the Land Transport Authority and DBS Bank in November last year. Systems@Work developed the application which enables motorists to sign up and link their credit card to the in-vehicle unit. Another example is a payment application it built to allow cross-border card-to-card money transfer, which was also launched in November last year by DBS and Mastercard.

In delivering these solutions, factors such as availability, reliability and performance are important. "Software applications have to run on an infrastructure - hardware servers as well as the operating system, database, and the application servers. As our technology partner, Sun provides the infrastructure layer that ensures the performance and reliability of our services. We look to Sun to help us deliver the complete solution," says Mr Ng.

The partnership has also been useful from a business perspective. "The folks at Sun understand what we do, which is very niche – software for the financial services industry. They often refer customers to us for sales pipelining, which is a win-win situation because the proposed solution is based on our combined systems."

The same term crops up in Sun's comments on the partnership. "Sun looks for a win-win situation with local infocomm companies," says Mr Allen Lai, Regional Manager for ISV partners, Global Sales and Services – Marketing, Sun Microsystems.

Sun was one of the pioneering multinational corporation (MNC) partners in iLIUP, joining the programme in the 1990s when it was known as the IT LIUP. Through such initiatives, it hopes to garner as many infocomm local enterprises (iLEs) as possible to use its latest technologies and products when developing state-of-the-art infocomm solutions for the domestic or foreign markets. "The local iLEs possess domain expertise in their field of third party software solutions and have carved out their own value propositions in the market. Sun wants to be the preferred technology partner to these iLEs," says Mr Lai.

Sharing the formula for a successful iLIUP partnership, Mr Ng of Systems@Work says it is important, when engaging with a business partner, to understand each others" objectives. "At the end of the day, both sides need to be clear why they are in the partnership. It has to be a two-way thing. This may be intuitive but sometimes people overlook it."

As for Sun, one of the key things it looks for is local infocomm companies who are willing to form a long-term alliance. "As the saying goes, 'a volunteer's heart is the strongest" and Sun looks for such characteristics in a partner," Mr Lai says.