Martin LaMonica

Last week I had the privilege to moderate a panel at the Global Ecommerce conference at the United Nations in New York. Even as delegates and private-sector people from around the world showed keen interest in the possibilities of e-commerce and e-government for economic development, attendees

A raging industry debate between competing development models was not the major factor in Mike Toma

With big money being committed to the acute problem of disconnected business systems, integration technology is becoming more specialized, allowing enterprises to tackle business process issues more directly.

Integration consistently tops IT executives' list of priorities, and with the focus on wringing value out of existing systems, there's no sign of that changing. The integration point that is perhaps most painful is ERP (enterprise resource planning). Although ERP vendors made their name on moving the same data across multiple applications, cracking data out of those suites requires more than a little heavy lifting.

Java set the world on fire six years ago with portable code. Now XML is setting the database world ablaze with easily transferable data.

Overheard at a recent e-business expo in New York: "They should include the 52-week high and low stock price next to vendor listings in this conference catalogue." Although just an offhand remark, the crack aptly captures growing concerns about the IT industry's financial woes, now spilling over dramatically into the business-to-business market.

Under the pall cast by Ariba Inc.'s aborted takeover of Agile Technologies LLC and a sinking stock market, representatives from the industry's top e-commerce technology suppliers this month argued that vendors need to shift strategies to address evolving business-to-business trading models during a panel session at the Internet and E-business Expo in New York.

Representatives from the industry's top e-commerce technology suppliers during a panel session at the Internet and E-business Expo in New York recently argued that vendors need to shift strategies to address evolving business-to-business trading models.