… for a business trip. I’ve just come out of extended paternity leave and its tough to leave and I’m going to miss my family for a week on the road, but as my understanding wife observed, “life goes on”. That attitude is not only healthy for us as we transition into a new chapter of family life and work / life balance, its also a fitting metaphor for how my own B2B research agenda is evolving.

In London for the first time I will not only continue to cast a light on my favorite topic, integration as a service (IaaS) — a phrase I coined in research in April, 2004 — I’ll also be casting light on Cloud services brokerage (CSB). In fact this London trip is a turning point because rather than just referencing CSB in my B2B integration scenario pitch — “It’s Time To Desegregate Cloud Services and E-Commerce Integration” — I’m building the case for why IaaS — as good and as important as it is — is not by itself the right metaphor for how Cloud services will be intermediated.

Wish I’d done so myself, but in fact Daryl Plummer was the first to publish research on “Cloud services brokerage” — for Gartner clients you can find and access that research here. The initial research laid out basic concepts and some of the more recent follow-on research — to which I and others contributed — filled out a few bits. But frankly we hadn’t yet pulled together a formal research plan. That, is about to change.

In the next few months you will see a more comprehensive set of research from Daryl, myself and others on the topic of CSB. Our working draft elevator pitch on CSB is as follows:

Cloud service consumers will need help to ensure they get good value from the services they consume. Given the rapid proliferation of Cloud services there will at times be a need for service providers to intermediate between service consumers and the originating service providers. These Value-added brokerages will integrate, customize, enhance, secure, aggregate, and add trust and value to Cloud services on behalf of those consumers. Examples of this are www.StrikeIron.com – which aggregates and adds value to a wide range of business information services – and www.OxygenCloud.com – which aggregates and adds value to various Cloud storage capabilities. Types of value include integration, aggregation, governance, enrichment, and any function that can be provided by a third party to ensure good service performance.

We plan to publish a research plan (in Gartner parlance that means publishing a “Key Issues” research note to lay out the research topic on CSB), publish an updated, more comprehensive definition of CSB, address how the CSB vendor landscape will emerge (and evolve from other markets, such as integration as a service, governance, etc.), and we’ll link this to other directly related IT scenarios including, of course, the emerging Cloud computing scenario, but also other directly related IT scenarios such as IT sourcing strategy.

Simply stated, it’s time to move beyond integration as a service. Don’t get me wrong … IaaS is and will remain an enduring fixture in the Cloud computing scenario for many years to comer. And my colleagues and I who cover B2B integration will continue to publish a lot on that topic, including the upcoming update to our Magic Quadrant for Integration Service Providers in 1Q11. And we will also continue to publish on B2B integration software, B2B integration outsourcing (managed services for B2B), business process networks (to be offered by CSBs – more on that later), and so on. Integration will be tightly weaved into the emerging CSB scenario. But its not like CSB will just be an evolutionary path for IaaS. Its a different business model. It social. It involves functionality like governance not generally associated with integration. And the scope of CSB impact on IT will far exceed integration.

After eight years Esther and I have moved on from being just a couple — with the Tiger Twins we’re now a family. And professionally I’m moving beyond just integration. Its all good, folks

I look forward to meeting with attendees, clients and vendors to discuss Cloud, CSB, integration and everything else that’s interesting and fun about IT at our event in London!

Cheers,

- bjl

Gartner’s formal consolidated response to the Cast Iron acquisition will likely publish by end-of-day tomorrow.

We’re already working on a consolidated response to this acquisition as well, but shooting from the hip here’s a few initial reactions:

• Acquired by IBM WebSphere group, along with Cast Iron, Lombardi, etc. — they’re decisively assembling a lotta B2B horsepower
• The WebSphere group now has even *more* integration software — hey, has anyone seen my software roadmap GPS?
• Sterling Collaborative Network + Cast Iron Cloud == A viable integration as a service offering for both traditional ecommerce & Cloud services
• The WebSphere group now has a bunch of Apps — some inherently multi-enterprise Apps — that’s a lot *on top* of application infrastructure
• IBM has pitched this acquisition in the context of “Dynamic Business Networks” — more expansive, but builds upon business process networks

From an industry impact think about other IT mega-vendors and think about other ‘pure-play’ B2B vendors … what impact might this acquisition have on SAP’s alliance with Crossgate or Oracle’s alliance with E2open, etc.?

I’ve said it before and its worth saying again — these are interesting times in B2B!

Cheers,

- bjl

• Tibco’s acquisition of Foresight on Friday (my colleagues and I are working on analysis)
• The GXS acquisition of Inovis in December — see my post and published research on that
• SPS Commerce’ December IPO filing with the SEC — analysis on that too available soon
• Oracle’s alliance with E2open on Business Process Networks in November (research here)

And so on, including other such moves in 2009 such as Elemica’s acquisition of Rubber Networks, Cast Iron’s alliance with Cloud providers such as Amazon and Google, and IBM’s alliance with Hubspan to offer business process networks for WebSphere.  As I recently noted this has recently attracted substantial investor interest, but as Jijesh Devan asked in one of his comments on that post: why “this renewed interest” in B2B? I attribute this (at least) to the following factors:

• Opportunistic M&A — in a perceived ‘bottom’ (let’s hope) market movers acquire, merge, etc
• B2B maturity – by customer, pricing, or reliability, integration solutions are getting better
• OPEX vs CAPX — when capital is tight, integration services look attractive relative to software
• Cloud proliferation — traditional ecommerce still rules, but Cloud computing needs integration

Many companies still (rightfully) run their own B2B hubs but it’s clear from client interest and the rapid growing managed services business that B2B integration outsourcing in particular is hitting its prime. I’m having discussions with Cloud computing / SaaS providers about how to address on-premise integration requirements. I’m also speaking to investors and CEO’s of B2B vendors citing “upcoming announcements” — war chests are being prepared … battle lines are being drawn … no doubt the B2B market in 2010 is gonna be fun.

But when you’re doing business activities like B2B integration, e-commerce or Cloud computing, understanding context is important – lest you get distracted by technology (“Web 2.0 — wow, cool”) and your day-to-day tasks (“please send me that file!”) and you lose sight of the whole point of why you’re doing such things.

Which brings me to my take-away observations from the Gartner BPM Summit here in Orlando that’s just winding down. I gave two presentations on the role of BPM technology in B2B / Ecommerce projects. Here’s a few bits of wisdom from conversations with our attendees:

Consume B2B in the form of processes!

Whatever you think you’re doing – “B2B integration”, “e-commerce”, “Cloud computing” – remember that you’re implementing PROCESS. Thus, if you’re implementing the procure-to-pay process for a supply chain look for solutions that are process-aware, e.g., pre-configured with the right B2B documents, maps for translation, process visibility rules and dashboards. One way of consuming B2B processes directly is in the form of “business process networks” (BPNs) – in his own blog David McCoy briefly mentions BPNs and here’s our formal definition of BPN’s for Gartner clients (login required). Though not available for all projects, BPNs are a direct way to implement B2B processes, increasingly available for e-procurement, financial services, logistics, etc.

Selectively model B2B processes!

Janelle Hill and I had a great conversation with some nice folks of an international B2B / Ecommerce services provider that attended my session and wanted to explore options for their increasing need of BPMS technology (including process modeling and a rules engine) specifically so they could deploy configurable ecommerce projects with scale for their customers. We agreed that for complex, high-value and fast-changing processes that can be leveraged across multiple B2B communities, BPMS technology would be a great addition. But that for more static, less-complex processes that traditional application development is still fine. Its important to apply BPMS technology judiciously — I’ve blogged before on the issue of when — and when not — to use BPMS technology.

Instrument the process!

Once you’ve automated a B2B process across your community don’t miss out on the opportunity to “mine” that flow of messages and transactions to expose key performance indicators and drive process improvement. I had great discussions with a few clients about its benefits – such as sharing multienterprise process insight amongst your B2B peers – and challenges – such as plugging a potentially CPU-intensive BPM rules engine on top of your high-throughput B2B traffic! But regardless, nearly everyone agrees that one way or another IT users are long overdue to benefit from the decade-long oft-failed promised of “mining” B2B / ecommerce (and now Cloud) traffic! I have recently spoken to a few reference customers that specifically cited the valuable impact that process visibility has on their B2B projects.

I welcome your thoughts on all this!

As I post this I’m preparing to head back from the BPM Summit. The event has come to a close, but its impact will endure. Look to me for more on the role of BPM technology and discipline in the domain of B2B, e-commerce and Cloud computing!