B2B Exchanges Will Rule

I just read the "Mom-and-Pop Ecommerce" piece. Target One reminds me somewhat of Crayfish, particularly the face-to-face 'Edo' sales style. The company has some nice ideas, but the POS terminal is still the central repository of data for these stores, and it may be just a matter of time before the POS kings like TEC and NEC incorporate the same type of services into their offering (with a chance of a buyout of Target One on the way).

B2B business exchanges like EC-Oil and AlphaBrain, on the other hand, could be the Microsofts and de Beers of the next century.

My bet is that the B2B exchanges will sneak up behind the Federal Trade Commission and other monopoly authorities and suddenly control the supply of the world's commodities - and make commodities out of goods and services that have not yet been commoditized (if you know what I mean).

You can see all around the world, governments are giving approval to all sorts of cartel-like organizations just because the have an 'e' attached to their name. See www.covisint.com. The same business models without the 'e' and without the "Let's not restrict the Internet" hype could have landed you in court just a couple of years ago.

Whichever way it goes, I'm in IT so that I can help make the new issues and problems and then get paid to put them right again.

Ian McDonnell
ian@mcdonnell.net