RE: B2B Players.
I interviewed with Seibel a few weeks back (again, Mr. Buckley, very smart people, they axed me;) as did I@ before it, very good sign of the competence of management for both companies)
But anyways, I was surprised that Seibel indeed was trying to offer the whole B2B package internally. Unfortunatley, they end up partnering just about everything but CRM. So I think Seibel will have a difficult time expanding beyond CRM (not that that is an immediate problem given the size of the addressable CRM market).
ITWO seems better positioned to expand beyond supply chain, as they do offer market place software which has gained some traction. Still, like Seibel, supply chain will be the end all for them, as that is their gorilla lock and their ability to spread outside of this market is still to be seen.
ARBA and CMRC. They do have the easiest to imitate software offerings. But, if it is so easily imitable, then why is it that ARBA is growing faster than any software company in history? Why is it that ARBA has the most customers and growing? and why is it that IBM and ITWO find it necessary to partner with ARBA if all ARBA offers is easily imitable, low grade software. These events just are not consistent with the reality being seen in the market place at present.
I think the fact is, that procurement software is not as easily to competently recreate on a massive scale as one would think. Although I am sure it can be done eventually. But the important issue here is the networking effect. Once you have Ariba buyer pushed massively through your system, and then have all your suppliers hooked up with Ariba as well, the switching costs become massive.
So what does this all mean? I don't know. What may happen is that XML will minimize these switching costs over time as each system becomes more and more compatible with each other system. In such a case an ARBA of the world will indeed become less important than the more sophisticated SEBL and ITWO offerings, and less capable of expanding beyond their initial markets. I think this depends on how quickly and competently ARBA can come out with collaboration and supply chain offering of their own.
So what investing advice does my wife (A B2B software consultant give) buy Oracle (for some reason she loves Oracle through and through) and buy Tibco or other "middleware" software company.
Now Tibco, may be a player in this space that may become the biggest winner of all? Hard to say, but middleware may be the biggest, yet to be recognized B2B software yet.
Tinker
JMHOoffered for thought and not for the veracity of the comments within. |
