Delivery of a paid Internet based service, via standard ASP model, that provides advanced B2B
Data Connectivity. The Service consists of a hosted Post Office for Business Data, allowing quick integration among supply chain partners with requirements for low cost and minimal latency for setup of EDI like data interchanges. Using the Web, Companies evaluate the menu of managed, B2B Post Office services covering connectivity, security, bandwidth, and reporting, and then register for the menu of Service levels that best meet their needs. By registering they contract to pay a set monthly fee.
A Web based Software Service (Web Service) providing a Post
Office type convenience for companies that need to share supply
chain data, or that need to join business process networks without
constructing much software infrastructure.
Like a dial tone on the phone, or the mailbox for letters, the B2B Post
Office is a generic, flexible, and innovative solution to the connection
and data integration problem faced by businesses attempting to hook
together their systems. As an example using the last generation of tools
and integration techniques, a Web shopping cart site accumulates Purchase
Orders that need to be fulfilled by the distribution software running at
the warehouse of a separate company. Orders must flow from the Web Site to
the DC, and the ensuing Invoices must be returned to the Web Site after the
DC ships the orders. Typically, engineering would design custom, one-
off solutions costing several thousand dollars, requiring several
weeks for implementation of a secure and reliable solution.
In stark contrast to the scenario above, the B2B Post Office allows an existing customer to construct a new interface in less than 15 minutes with no incremental cost above their normal monthly service fee. A browser is used to access and to complete several web forms that provide definition of standard data location, communication protocol, and security provisions. As soon as these Web Forms are complete, the new data interface is ready to run and the systems located at the respective companies are ready to share their data on the B2B Post Office Service's web-based infrastructure.
B2BPO delivers On-Demand connectivity and integration among existing application systems located at supply chain partners that are small and medium sized businesses. This software framework offering flexible integration among B2B affiliates is delivered as a service, enableing secure, cost effective solutions that are very fast to market, and that present absolutely NO responsibilites for owning new internal software or communication infrastructure.
Will you be able to support the integration requirements of your business? Are your available engineering resources and budgets stretched so thin accross a host of requirements that you can no longer afford to devlope "one-off" solutions? And are the Enterprise Software solutions like Cape Clear, Sonic, and Grand Central too expensive? What if there was an services infrastructure available on the web, offering a combination of features equivalent to a dial tone for b2b data and a virtual post office for dropping your supply chain "data correspondence" into. What if you could build and then test a new system interface in 30 minutes without the services of a programmer or a system administrator?
B2B Post Office permits new interface construction in 10 minutes by using a couple of web based forms to capture data definitions that would be familiar to any users of Middle Ware products and messaging frameworks. The parties to the interface - the data producer and the data consumer - agree on a shared Topic that's used like the combination of Address and Return address on a traditional letter. Topics bind together the source and destination of common business data. Separately, each party uses another Routing and Security Form to select the appropriate features for connecting their servers to the Post Office. As soon as these Web Forms are complete, the new data interface is ready to run.
Anywhere that you have access to a browser, you can access the "post office" forms to build new interfaces. NO Software installation required and the interfaces can easily be set up by a business analyst.
Any Small to mid-size company that is not utilizing a software connectivity solution like SAP to connect to their partners would be a prospect for this service. Larger companies employing extensive software evaluations with the objective of avoiding small company risk among their vendors would probably not be included in the target market.
Several providers of Business Process Networks exist, an example would be
Grand Central.
However, the service frameworks that they offer are proprietary, differing from B2B PO's architecture in several ways. No feature for extensible plug-ins exists in the competition. Rules engines used by the competition are locked up behind their network gateway, making the service engine a black box.
In contrast, the server components in this product are all flexible, Open API's. In addition, following the strategy of grid computing, every node in the business network employed by B2B PO can be either client or server. Message traffic over each leg or hop can be pushed or pulled. All connections and exchanges of data may be either event driven or may be the result of scheduled processes.
This depends on marketing specifics that are still TBD.
Because this is an automated virtual service with low requirements for traditional brick and mortar customer service, the incremental operational costs are near zero. Once the servers are operational at a certain capacity and level of service, additional customers can be added at zero cost.
The B2BPO is Software as a Service, drawing on emerging technical aspects of the web permitting repositioning of traditional software, affecting methods for locating the service, linking to the service, and consuming the service. Traditional licensing and software installation requirements do not exist for this new Service category.
Web Services will utilize new methods of Distribution. Providers will be located within
Directories
listing feature Menus for each Service Vendor. Once a selection of a particular Vendor's Web Service is made from the general listings, other handshake protocols allow these particular services to be used ad-hoc with very little setup. The actual Services reside either on server's based at individual providers or the services can be deployed on generic portals with standard security and encryption services. Similar to the fashion in which a browser requests the home page for ibm.com, customers of web services will request discreet services like distribute my data to my users. According to the article below, this particular area of Software as a Service is poised for rapid growth.
Web Services Background
The nature of web services almost guarantees an exit once you have a subscriber base. Standards will make it possible to re-combine Services much the way a good chef recombines ingredients and menu items at a restaurant. Services can be aggregated and easily re-assembled by conglomerates in the same fashion as ISP's consolidating their customers. Large UDDI providers like IBM and Microsoft and other Vertical Service Providers will exist and will be looking to consolidate their own earnings with purchases of smaller vendors.
ASP or Application Service Provider. Application Service Providers are third-party entities that manage and distribute software-based services and solutions to customers across a wide area network from a central data center. In essence, ASPs are a way for companies to outsource some or almost all aspects of their information technology needs.