For those of us that have been in the IT industry for a really long time (you decide what’s defined as a long time because I am not going to date myself), there’s one thing that we tech people always seem to forget (maybe due to short term memory loss) and that is….“technology  never goes away…which means  everything needs to interoperate. ”     Why do we keep thinking that the next greatest tech trend will replace things we’ve already done?  Remember when the Internet emerged and XML was going to replace EDI cheaply?  Or, how about legacy platforms that were going to be replaced by client/server?  Oh, I could on and on - lightweight vs. heavy client,  ASPs, SOA, SaaS.  Technology trends are like the next wave of fashion.  What’s hot this year, may not be hot in a year or two.  But, what’s different is that, unlike your  wardrobe, where you can give away last year’s trendy clothes to Goodwill,  you can’t do that with technology, or at least not easily and most of all not cheaply.  Plus, we can’t forget the millions of dollars of investment we put into our infrastructures and the years spent on ensuring our systems hum and are available around the clock.  So, what does that mean for us poor souls that have to ensure we continue to meet customer and trading partner demand in a secure way that is reliable, extensible, and maintainable (wow, lots of ables in that sentence!)  Because it is hard to anticipate how our systems will need to be changed so they can integrate and interact with new technology fashion trends, B2B integration solutions are the answer to guarantee  “everything interoperates” and new technology fashion trends can be adopted with ease.   When I meet with clients to talk to them about why they should outsource their B2B Ecommerce program, I start by saying (and I mean it sincerely), “why in the world would you want to do this yourself?”  It takes a lot of full time resources just to make sure that companies can interact with their trading partners without revamping their current systems, data and process.  The great news is that B2B Outsourcing solutions mediate the differences between trading partner requirements so companies can focus on more strategic IT projects that improve serving customers.  Actually, a lot of the benefits customer experience when they outsource was unveiled in the recent Stanford University research study concluding companies deploying B2B outsourcing solutions experience a return that is 245 percent greater than their annual investment and a 62 percent improvement in customer satisfaction. Conclusions from the study indicate that companies that outsource B2B programs benefit not only from improved customer satisfaction, but also from improved B2B technical capabilities, greater competitive differentiation, greater inventory visibility, increased system uptime and availability.  Now, new high tech fashion trends can come and go without the worry of having to plan for migration and upgrade projects just to stay connected.

 I hear several B complex vitamins  help improve short term memory loss.  Maybe we should all  try taking some!