RE: [ubl-dev] Re: [ebxml-dev] P2P for e-business - applications?

["Roger Bass" <Roger@Traxian.com>]

Stephen, David et al,

I'm jumping into this thread a little late... but to me, this all begs
the question: "what problem do you think P2P would be aiming to solve?"
This technology discussion all misses the point. From a pragmatic SMB's
perspective, all they care about in this context is interconnecting
their business processes with one or more of their trading partners -
and having that be easy and inexpensive enough to be worthwhile, in the
context of the overall business relationship. (The paper you link is
quite flawed in its most basic premises and approach, IMHO).

Standards, P2P, pretty much everything discussed here is just a means to
that end, from the user perspective.

Does P2P help with any of that? I would say, no, at least not for now.
My company actually built a P2P product for connecting QuickBooks user
with QuickBooks user about five years ago. It worked fine "in the lab" -
but in real life, dealing with process variations between businesses,
even users of the same application, meant there was too much tweaking
required on the client.

Today, we can connect up a whole variety of different systems and
processes, not just QB-to-QB - but with a hybrid hosted service / client
model. The client still needs tweaking sometimes - but less than before.
Don't get me wrong - I'd love to have a technology that could do at
least some connections P2P, and would do it for free. But P2P isn't
essential for "free" either - we already have a free offering (with
limits) and will probably offer that more broadly well before we do pure
P2P. In fact, I expect we will end up doing P2P in future - but only
once we have a big enough group of SMBs connected to have a stable set
of end-to-end process requirements. Then and only then will we (or
anyone else trying to do this) be able to deliver a P2P product that
actually works.

There are no short cuts here.

Regards,
Roger



-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Green [mailto:stephengreenubl@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 1:02 AM
To: david.lyon@preisshare.net
Cc: ubl-dev@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [ubl-dev] Re: [ebxml-dev] P2P for e-business -
applications?

Hi David

Thanks for all these points.

On 22/03/07, david.lyon@preisshare.net <david.lyon@preisshare.net>
wrote:
> Quoting Stephen Green <stephengreenubl@gmail.com>:
>
> > I'd personally always favoured the P2P model primarily
> > but seen the hub model or variants as a fallback.
>
> But they work.....
>
> looking at:
>
> http://www.inovis.com/solutions/catalogue/
>
> "Retailers: Easy access to current product information
>
>      * Multiple access options including web-based user interface,
> EDI, XML and real-time application integration"
>
> what more could you want?
>
> The benefits of true p2p could only be marginal over the above.

Well, I guess I'm seeing hub marketplaces as something of a
service and P2P as a potential infrastrucure built on a type of
product. There are strengths and weaknesses in each model
but I'd have thought SMEs would favour something based on
products and independant of what they might find to be an
expensive and risky service provision.

I'd like to see P2P controlled better and co-ordinated - that's
perhaps what might turn a set of products (not all doing well
it seems) into a good infrastructure. I think the article I refered
to might have some of the answers in how it calls for management
of transactions when there are more than two participants. I guess
this means something like with eBay where rather than act as a
hub, the middle man just facilitates a kind of P2P which involves
something like the PayPall participant too and so needs the
extra management. I wonder, does eBay provide for any kind of
B2B with P2P software?

>
> In fact it's fair to say that a lot of businesses are "afraid" of
> getting the data any faster. I've even heard it said that it might
> "break" their computer if it goes too fast. As in "our computer
> couldn't handle that".

And I take your point about accountants' being needed to be won
over into cooperating and not just trying to take a slice. This might
be where governments can particularly help - getting everyone working
together for the common good. I'm not sure whether something like
eBay or telecoms fostering it or whether a race of government or
each nation or set of nations promoting it for their citizens (as they
raced to be best place for B2B and ebusiness a few years back) would
be most in public interest. Hopefully we'll see (sorry that sounds
presumptious).

>
> Of course, I'm just playing the devils advocate here.

I guessed that :-)

>
> But I'm wondering what sort of capability you are thinking about
> exactly when there appears to be so much stuff out there that already
> is or is purporting to do it.

I guess I'd hope governments would look at their countries and deduce
whether
something can be done locally to better get P2P working or whether there
is
nothing they can do and that it works as well as it ever will. Then
there's the
need for it all to be using the same standards to allow global commerce
and that
might be where UN and OASIS would come in.

Maybe the focus is too much exclusively on hubs and if the same
investments
by governments were made in P2P to form mesh and open marketplaces (like
telephone infrastructures where all the service providers work together
to make
it all work and governments pitch in to ensure a level paling field, as
they may
do more with ISPs and MAC addresses say) as have been made with hubs
then
maybe we'd all be using P2P and using hubs strategically and discretely
where
acceptable to do so and not so much because it is the only option that
might
work for us.

>
> Maybe you are just hoping to get UBL going a bit faster than it
> already is. If so, then that's fine and I can easily go along with
> your reasoning.

I'd be happy if it all worked with OAGIS or UBL or whatever, just in UK
where I
live it's UBL which is on the radar for government and UBL looks easier
for
accountants to get their heads around when they've been used to paper
systems.
I notice Compiere includes an OAGIS B2B facility - just that I'm
thinking lowest
common denominator here and that means SMEs and with subsets UBL looks
marginally more promising for these (just my opinion).

I really just want it to be as easy or easier to do P2P than to sign up
to a
marketplace and there to be cost effective ways to do it which reflect
the
more direct approach to B2B.

>
> True P2p is still a challenge.... people would need to know what the
> exact business benefits would be before they would throw any cash at
it.
>
> As mentioned above, there are probably many solutions which come very
> close in place already.

I hope there are ones suitable for using UBL where there is a
requirement
to do so. I hope there are some reliable options there too. I still
think there
may be a need for a little management of extra parties involved such as
for
payment too. I'd like to see some sort of audit of what all works
together
and works widely (not excluding the little but decent companies as some
marketplaces seem by thier nature and maybe by design prone to do).
Having it better controlled and governed in a productive and positive
way
by governments and public bodies would be ideal.

Maybe the think tanks around should look at all this some more as it
seems
to be neglected and not living up to potential.

Thanks David

All the best

Stephen Green


>
> Regards
>
> David
>
>
>
>
>
>
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