Building Business Network Platforms In The Cloud

Social networks revolutionized personal computing, allowing people to use PCs to engage with friends and family. However, until now, business collaboration hasn't seen such disruptive innovation. Currently, only some systems of engagement are based on a social enterprise paradigm, while the context provided by more traditional systems of records is widely missing. Collaboration and integration of systems of records is still based on the exchange and mapping of business-to-business (B2B) data between multiple, scattered systems along supply chains and traditional business partner networks. CIOs in the vanguard are starting to identify the closest relationships they have with their business partners and are looking for new platforms to create the next generation of business networks. This is a good time for integration and middleware vendors and cloud providers to revise their architecture and consider collaborative tenancy for new, much more efficient business network platforms in the cloud.