[ubl-comment] Re: [oagis-users] Big News from OAGI

[Todd Boyle <tboyle@rosehill.net>]

At 04:40 AM 12/9/2002, David Connelly (OAGI) wrote:

>MEMBERSHIP:  We celebrate the following new members in the Open 
>Applications Group:
>
>[.......]- Intuit 
>(<http://www.intuit.com/>http://www.intuit<http://www.intuit.com/>.com/)

Does this imply that Intuit will in future, provide any standards-based 
interfaces?  That would be an excellent development.  I would regard that 
as an earthquake, and should set off a stampede by users as well as the IT 
and financial services industries, into the OAG.

Excuse me however, if I am a bit skeptical. The small business community 
has for *many* years, needed open APIs or at least, document import/export 
from Intuit Quickbooks and Quicken, and has only recently begun to see a 
very expensive "developer network" empowering VARs, ISVs, etc. to make a 
living from their APIs.

Market dynamics did not allow shrinkwrap vendors to publish efficient 
import/export for interoperability (general ledger) because that allowed 
users to migrate to other packages.  That translates into higher prices for 
users. To this very day it remains impossible or uneconomically expensive, 
to migrate a Quickbooks company to any other software.  Everybody knows, 
you just start over with Peachtree or whatever, on January 1 with an empty 
installation.

Does the adoption of global standard like OAGIS overcome this well-known, 
long-established economic problem (that shrinkwrap cannot allow customers 
to export)?

Does the "network effect" from participating in electronic markets, access 
to greater revenue, lower sales, etc overcome the loss of stickiness for 
the software vendor?  Do these things compel a higher price from 
consumers?  Does the improvement in integration?

Until knowing the intention of Intuit I will remain quite puzzled by this 
Intuit membership.  I must assume, they are studying standards-based 
interfaces for their midrange version, whereas, it is most needed by 
Individuals and SMEs in Quickbooks Basic, and in Quicken. Since they are a 
newcomer to the Midrange market they're singing a different 
tune.  Newcomers always espouse open interfaces :-)

An Intuit employee was announced as reaching voting membership in the OASIS 
UBL group March 26 by Jon Bosak but Intuit is no longer show in the 
membership and Intuit's participation or adoption of UBL is not evident 
anywhere I can see,
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/#members

Intuit should port their software to BSD (which is, MAC OS/X).  Intuit 
should implement an integrated RADIUS server, ebXML MS, or other 
standards-based transport, to provide a monolithic end-to-end alignment of 
ARs and APs between Quickbooks users.   These measures would enable 
individuals and SMEs an independent capability to conduct business without 
portals.  OAGIS semantics will be a good step, but don't really get us all 
the way home.   That's like unlocking the prisoners from their cells while, 
the main gate is still locked.

TOdd
Todd Boyle CPA  9745-128th Ave NE  Kirkland WA
International Accounting Services, LLC  www.gldialtone.com
425-827-3107  editor, AR/AP everywhere  www.arapxml.net