Event Summary
Business-to-business
E-purchasing company Ariba Inc. (Nasdaq: ARBA) has selected software tool maker
Tibco Software Inc. (Nasdaq TIBX) to help Ariba's customers connect their backend
enterprise systems to the Ariba Network. Ariba supplies its own software to
connect its customers to systems by vendors such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle
and Baan, but according to Ariba VP Dave Rome, the use of specialists such as
Tibco will be more efficient.
Market
Impact
Together
with recent partnerships agreements with Siebel and InterWorld Ariba is giving
every indication of having chosen to focus its resources on its core business,
the creation of catalog-based marketplaces. While there is no reason to expect
any fundamental changes in Ariba's product capabilities in the near future as
a result of this announcement, there are two important results. First, if the
transfer of responsibility to Tibco is successful, Ariba will be offering a
much more effective level of integration with enterprise systems that is does
now. Second, as it sheds the costs of maintaining its own integration software,
Ariba will have that much more to apply to enhancing and marketing its product.
By
this move Ariba is acknowledging that applications middleware is a maturing
business, and that an open systems approach will let any integration systems
vendor serve as a bridge between Ariba's systems and backend corporate systems.
Ariba believes that this will ultimately lead to faster deployment for Ariba's
customers .
User
Recommendations
Ariba customers for whom such integration is important - or who may be contemplating
the acquisition of an ERP system - will want to find out the details and timing.
Customers will be free to continue with Ariba's current approach, engage Tibco,
or use some other middleware solution. Those organizations who have already
customized Ariba's propreitary adaptors should immediately press for a migration
plan to Tibco, while those considering Ariba should probe more deeply into the
capabilities of the Tibco product. Some customers will find that this announcement
makes Ariba a more suitable choice, but others may discover that current back-end
integration capabilities move Ariba lower down on their short list of vendors.
In that case, they will have leverage to do some strong price negotiating with
Ariba.