This morning I was graced with one of those proud marketeer moments.  Gartner issued a new taxonomy for the entire B2B infrastructure market.  This report was the collective work of five of their brightest, and this report this time was spot on.

Gartner introduced an entirely new category called B2B Project Outsourcing.  They cited the leading drivers as companies with 1) large and complex e-commerce projects, 2) small-and-medium businesses (SMBs) without the IT savvy or desire to respond to external mandates, 3) large enterprises consolidating integration projects, 4) ERP extension projects and 5) SOA extension projects.  In all cases, customers concluded that owning and operating B2B infrastructure was not a required core competency for their business.

When we combined our on-demand technology (GXS Trading Grid) and our B2B project outsourcing capabilities, we created B2B Managed Services.  Based on the wide range of customers from diverse industries adopting our B2B Managed Services in the last 18 months, we quickly learned that we have more than a trend, we have a Redshift.  

As I learned recently from Sun, Redshift refers to the color change of light from galaxies that are moving away from Earth because of the universe’s expansion; galaxies farther away are shifted more dramatically to the red than those nearby.   Customers that are using our managed services are ‘redshifting’ away from their competitors by gaining speed and ROI advantages from offloading non-core functions.

The point is that whether it is proven by new customers, confirmed by Gartner or defined so eloquently as a Redshift, one thing is for certain, we have a trend, a fad, a movement… and it’s here to stay.