RE: SMEs : was RE: Party XML Schema Defintions

["COOPER,STEPHENIE (HP-PaloAlto,ex1)" <stephenie_cooper@hp.com>]

Hi.

From a Gartner Group report, "The Net-Liberated Organization: A Philosophy
for Post-E-Business Survival", September 2000:

"Gartner believes that the changes to the international economy caused by
e-business will be so pronounced that the term "e-business" will disappear
between 2006 and 2008, as e-business operations and models become the norm
for all businesses (0.8 probability)."

This means that e-business will be ingrained into all business models,
software ... and hardware!  The SME will pick up one piece of software that
does the initial setup of the PC (or MAC or workstation or whatever) and
network connection, and from then on, that SME will do everything from the
desktop, with interfaces that are so friendly that "Help" functions are
virtually obsolete.  

If you've been around long enough, you remember when we had to keep track of
what e-mail software the colleague was using (not to mention keeping track
of who did and who did not have e-mail), as well as knowing whether they
were using X.400 or the internet or other connection (usually proprietary),
who could and who could not receive attachments and in what formats, file
size limits, and so on.  Do you do much thinking about that anymore?  I
don't even worry now about who is on Windows and who is on MAC - the
attachment comes to me in the format that my PC can understand - it's part
of the service. 

B2B commerce will be like that in 5-6 years.  The desktop will handle
discovery, ordering, tracking, planning ... anything ... without requiring
any business user to have any technical expertise, and without requiring an
SME to have inhouse technical support.  Not only that, but large companies
will will have been able to significantly reduce the number technical
resources required to do business.   

ebXML's goal should be to help make that happen.

Regards,
Steph.


-----Original Message-----
From: James Bryce Clark [mailto:jbc@lawyer.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 12:04 PM
To: Welsh, David
Cc: Stefano POGLIANI; Martin Bryan; James Bryce Clark;
linkage@interaccess.com; ebxml-core@lists.ebxml.org;
ebxml-tp@lists.ebxml.org
Subject: RE: SMEs : was RE: Party XML Schema Defintions


Dave Welsh: 
> Without sounding like a devils advocate, how much is the real 
> busine$$ value of 'discovery' as described below.  In terms used 
> by some, "what's the customer experience?". 

My own informal view of the migration path requirements are as follows.
 
1.   Anything we do has to work for live transaction streams that have
already proven an intere$t in electronic tran$action$ by $howing up in EDI,
RosettaNet, etc.  [This is Dave's issue, I think.]

2.   Our work ought to leave a path to wider adoption.   Some of the likely
candidates who are not currently in the space are those 800-pound gorillas
you mentioned.   They want the paperfree savings, they need to rationalize
their supply chains, and they are sensitive (to greater and lesser degrees)
to the need to not impose disruptive or technically overreaching
requirements on their vendors.

3.   If the standard proves interoperable*, feasible** and popular***,
network effects will cause a marketplace to form.   We don't need to claim
that this will happen;  but should design so as to allow it   

Jamie

* The Y2K-type problem.  You don't have to pay someone $500,000 to migrate
your system  to it, and it doesn't require that you landlock your data in
another proprietary format.   [The ebXML requirements address this, and
Martin Bryan's comments and the BPE project are attempting to put it into
practice.]  

** The fish-bicycle problem.  The modelling sets map to your reality --
they allow you to do some of the high-volume stuff you actually do in
commerce.  [This is Bob Haugen's desk-test project.]  

*** The Gertrude Stein problem.  A combination of early adopters and
prospects for trustworthy resource discovery give you a basis for
confidence that there is a "there" there.   [This is a market effect, that
either happens or doesn't.]