March/April 2003

Following the disposal of its online marketplace business to eScout (e.logistics Magazine, last issue), Commerce One is putting new emphasis on collaborative commerce, and is underlining its espousal of new technologies by throwing its weight behind Web Services as the great enabler.

According to Oliver Mueller, head of solutions marketing, many potential customers say they are not ready yet to automate all their procurement processes (this is known as the "source-to-payment" spectrum). Commerce One has therefore drawn on its marketplace heritage to develop what it is calling Conductor - "a platform for enterprise customers to link processes and applications".

 

Mueller stresses that the company is avoiding a "rip and replace" philosophy. "Users can leverage existing investment," he told e.logistics Magazine.

What does Conductor offer? Mueller explains it as a system that promotes smooth and seamless management of hitherto separate functions like purchasing, order handling and invoice reconciliation under a unified user interface. "It's a management by exception model."

He draws a distinction between this approach and enterprise application integration. "That uses hard-coded data mapping; we do mapping flexibly at the configuration level."

Web Services represent the connecting layer, and Commerce One has taken pains to show that this technology can work even for applications that are not themselves "Web Services aware". It does this by using Web Service "wrappers", which provide connectivity with existing software. It has also developed standard interfaces for specific applications such as SAP's ERP systems.

"We're aiming to be open and pragmatic," Mueller told e.logistics Magazine. To underline the point, he emphasised that the company was working in the J2EE development environment, rather than in the Microsoft-specific dot-NET camp.

Early users include Schlumberger, BOC Gases and the Open GIS Consortium. Schlumberger, for instance, is using Conductor to assemble standards-based businesses processes so that buyers can create RFQs for special-request items without needing to do any later re-entry.