What came out clearly from my discussions with heads of our competitors is that ebdex is clearly very ambitious when it comes to partnering. ebdex’s strategy is to excel in three areas, these being:

• Understand the market better than anyone else
• Deliver a service better than anyone else
• In this process, manage an extensive partner network from product development, sales to operations with later addition of customer service

The only significant movement I have seen within our competition is the development of hub alliance by Causeway Technologies, Burns e-Commerce and Asite. Well done guys. I know that hub alliance continues to receive enquiries about linking with other hubs, this is only to be encouraged. However, one company has refused to join due to their position in the industry which can only be seen as damaging to the spirit of co-operation and bringing the maximum benefits to customers.

Do you know of any other similar initiatives? If so please do share.

 [Note to myself - blog about future possibility of collusion]

Tags: hub alliance, Burns e-Commerce, Causeway Technologies, Asite, ebdex

I had the fortune to speak and/or meet number of ebdex’s competitors this week. These include Simon Fox (CEO of TBiConnect), Rhys Jones (CEO of Accountis), Philip Brown (CEO of Causeway) and Mike Gibbard (Chief Solutions Architect of Burns e-Commerce Solutions). I wish I can share what we discussed openly. But alas, I had to honour the confidentiality of each of the conversations I had. What is interesting to note is that:

• We all operate in the same industry
• Yet we have spent different budgets in developing our solutions – trust me, the difference from the lowest to the highest is very very significant
• Most of us use different connectivity methods – all claim to offer a mixture
• Most of us use different hub architecture
• Most of us use different software languages from J2EE to Python to build the solutions
• All agree that the market is challenging and need significant effort to educate customers
• They are all too busy to blog
• All agree that I should continue to blog – come on guys, keep sending your cheques

Now, do you want to know who I am meeting next week? I am afraid you just have to wait.

Clarification 1:

Accountis has a blog and a RSS feed. When I said Accountis is too busy to blog, what I meant was, Rhys Jones is not blogging – I know the reason – its to do with timing, but I am afraid that I do not buy it, Rhys.

Shyness

I know Rhys Jones is a regular reader of my blog and so is some other senior leaders and managers of EIPP industry. They tend to respond to me directly by e-mail instead of through the blog. This shows that people are still too shy to put their names on the web.

Tags: ebdex, Causeway Technologies, Burns e-Commerce, Accountis, TBiConnect

One idea I recently entertained was to examine the possibility of adopting Oracle Fusion Middleware within ebdex Document Exchange for integration with Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, as well as using it for such functionality as business rule engine, mobility, etc. It seems I was not the only one having these thoughts.

Recently, Bottomline Technologies announced adopting Oracle Fusion Middleware to enhance the integration with Oracle’s JD Edwards and Oracle E-Business Suite. And they are going after Oracle users (as was the intention of ebdex). Extracts from the announcement:

“Oracle Fusion Middleware integration is a key initiative for Bottomline across all of its document, payments and invoice automation solutions,” said Gareth Priest, Vice President of Global Product Management for Bottomline Technologies. “Support for Oracle Fusion Middleware protects our customer’s investments and enables them to enjoy lower total cost-of-ownership and increased agility as they transition to Oracle’s Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).”

Oracle Fusion Middleware provides bi-directional integration with any Oracle application or business process via Oracle BPEL Process Manager. The connectivity embraces Web Services to allow any Bottomline software solution to initiate or be part of any business process. This rapid integration enables Bottomline’s advanced document and payments automation capabilities to appear as a link from within Oracle JDeveloper.

“As companies move beyond point-to-point integration, they require an SOA-based middleware platform that enables them to deliver integrated solutions regardless of the underlying application environment or product release,” said John Gawkowski, Vice President, Partner Technology Solutions at Oracle. “Oracle Fusion Middleware represents an integration approach that shares an open and common technology foundation with Oracle applications. This is a key differentiator for Bottomline as they continue to drive customer value from their advanced financial process automation solutions.”

There is a possibility that Bottomline Technologies could snap up all remaining Oracle’s user base as they start to plug into Oracle’s sales and marketing machine. ebdex is too small to respond to this competitively. The question now is what are others doing about this? Are they going to remain silent or join in, creating a buzz in the market place? What do you think?

Tags: Oracle, Bottomline Technologies, Oracle Fusion Middleware, ERP, EIPP