Challenges in the field of B2B standardisation Eva Söderström Dept. of Computer Science, University of Skövde Box 408, SE-541 28 Skövde, Sweden Tel. +46 500 448347, Fax. +46 500 448399 Email:
[email protected] Abstract The competitive business world has changed considerably thanks to the globalisation of the market. Business contacts are being established all over the world, without regard for the previous limitations of space or time. However, global business faces great inter-operability challenges, e.g. how to enable collaborating businesses to communicate and exchange information in a flexible and secure manner. One approach in Business-to-Business (B2B) ecommerce is to use a communication standard, which is a mechanism used to create and exchange documents between organisations, where the document structure and the contained information is in a format that can be understood and possibly automatically processed by organisations’ system software. In standardisation, several roles have emerged, of which this paper deals with two – the standards researcher (referred to as the theoretical view) and the standards developer (referred to as the practice view), in comparing their views on positive and negative aspects of standards. Results show that both views agree more or less on the positive aspects, while there are considerable differences in the negative aspects. Aspects mentioned fall into three categories: standards content; standards development; and standards use. From the discussion, four challenges for future B2B standards work could be identified. Keywords: standards, inter-operability
1
Introduction
Is there anyone today that would argue against that the business world is becoming increasingly complicated? Probably not. The
focus has changed from internal functions or departments within companies towards satisfying the customers. The Internet poses new opportunities and challenges to be conquered, and e-business is now a dominating factor for many organisations. Time and geographical location are no longer obstacles. However, hardly any organisation can afford to simply through out old technology and replace it – far too many systems are critical for a company’s survival. Instead, co-operation between existing and emerging technology is a necessity. New developments in organisational structure and in technology bring an increased information flow between organisations. This flow exemplifies the need to exchange information. In this paper, we address the area of Business-to-Business, i.e. electronic trading between at least two organisations, and in particular standardisation of such trading relationships. A standard is defined as a mechanism used to create and exchange documents between organisations, where the document structure and the contained information is in a format that can be understood and possibly automatically processed by organisations’ system software. One motivation for using standards is their ability to connect organisations with their partners. There are several roles involved around a standard: standards developers, standards users, standards researchers, software providers, and standards evolvers. An organisation is not confined to one role only, but can be both a developer and a user. This paper deals with two roles: standards researchers (referred to as the theoretical view), and standards developers (referred to as the practice view). We were unable to identify any comparison between the two views regarding their opinions
on positive and negative aspects of standardisation. This is an important problem, since a better basis for future standards development and usage can be created when the differences are made explicit, and by identifying some of the challenges. The study consisted of a literature review to identify opinions of standards researchers, and of four interviews with leading standards developers. The standards developer organisations are all industry consortia, and since their participation is based on anonymity, their identities will not be revealed. Our study shows that the differences between these two views lie mainly in the negative aspects, and the result points to a number of challenges for all parties active in the B2B standardisation area. The paper is organised as follows: chapter 2 describes and compares positive aspects, while negative aspects are discussed in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 includes a comparison of the aspects, before Chapter 5 presents the challenges for future standards work in B2B organisations.
2
Positive aspects of standardisation
As a reminder, the theoretical view refers to research findings identified in scientific papers, primarily by academia, but also by corporate research.
2.1
The theoretical view
Research papers report on four aspects of standards to be regarded as positive. Firstly, it is the capability of B2B standards to enable global communication and connectivity [Harrelson, 2000; Burrows, 1999; Intel Corporation, 2000]. Standards have in some ways facilitated global co-operation, by providing a means for organisations to structure and exchange information without worrying too much about e.g. format and translation. Another motivation is that organisations that co-operate using standards can do so without having to worry about restrictions in time and space. Standards can facilitate co-operation by enabling business processes and systems to function together, and on some occasions be automated [Filos and Ouzounis, 2000; Cargill, 1999; Anderson and Allen, 1999; Carroll, 2000; Burrows, 1999;
Ousterhout, 2000; Vercoulen and van Wegberg, 1999]. An example; a business document can be sent between organisations A and B, containing a request for product information. Using the standard, B’s systems can recognise the kind of request that is received, and can automatically process it and send the desired information back. As the use of standards increase, so will the available body of knowledge about standards. Most people fear change if they do not know what the future situation will be like. The same can be said for organisations. It takes a certain number of users before something will become well spread and used, which applies to standards as well. As the body of knowledge about standards increases, it will become easier for organisations to tap into existing knowledge and not having to start from scratch when e.g. implementing a standard. This will enable them to lower their costs and to increase their productivity [Ousterhout, 2000; McMahon-Cost and Wilt, 1999; Shelton and Fielding, 1999; Carroll, 2000; Harrelson, 2000]. Not only does this reduce the time needed to adopt and implement a standard, but it also reduces the time needed to create a partner network, or to add new members to such a network. Technology in organisations will therefore be used more efficiently [Burrows, 1999; Shelton and Fielding, 1999; Seminerio, 2000; Franke, 1999], e.g. since standards use does away with the necessity to translate between document formats. To summarise the theoretical view on positive aspects of standardisation, the following points were mentioned: • Standards enable global communication and connectivity • Standards enable business processes and systems connect, and on some occasions to be automated • Standards knowledge enable organisations to lower costs and increase productivity • Standards enable a more efficient use of information technology in organisations The theoretical view thus covers aspects that concern standards contents, standards development, and the actual use of standards. Next, the practice view will be presented.
2.2
The practice view
As mentioned previously, the practice view reflects results from an interview study conducted with leading standards development organisations. One aspect mentioned was that standards enable connectivity, with platform independency. The ability to co-operate and communicate with old as well as new business partners is important, without having to make changes in existing technology. In particular, the ability to have a representation of business processes that enables sharing across different partners, products, corporations, divisions, etc. without having to care much for technical requirements was mentioned. A common representation of business processes also includes a common representation of communication, and the ability to speak a common language. The common representation helps to avoid that every organisation works on its own, in which case they would not get any advantages of the standards idea. One possible effect stemming from the need for a common language is standards enforcement. We illustrate our point through an example: one supplier has two main, large customers. Both customers demand that the supplier adopts the standard they are using. The supplier is then forced to spend twice the money to comply with and manage the new standards and systems. If the customers had used the same standard (the same language) these costs could have been cut considerably. The same applies in the opposite direction, where large distributors with many trading partners wish to speak the same language with all partners. Enabling processes and applications to exchange information and to inter-operate directly is hence very important, since it facilitates business model evolvement, and allows a more flexible software interoperation. A standards-based architecture enables organisations to make better use of old software, which otherwise would not be possible to use since it could not connect to the new technology. Finally, the ability to cut costs in the long-term sense by using standards was mentioned. Long-term was a keyword in this case.
To summarise the practice view on positive aspects of standardisation, the following points were mentioned: • Standards enable connectivity, with platform independency • Standards provide the ability for business partners to speak a common language • Standards enable business processes and applications to exchange information and inter-operate directly • Standards provide the ability to cut costs in the long-term sense As in the previous chapter, results from the practice view reflect different perspectives of standards. These are: standards contents, standards development and the actual usage of standards. In section 4.1, the similarities and differences between the theoretical and practice views will be compared. For the time being, though, our attention will be turned towards negative aspects of standardisation.
3
Negative aspects of standardisation
It is not obvious to everyone that standardisation only is of good at all times. There are quite a few counter-arguments on what the problems in standardisations are. Quoting one respondent: “Standardisation may not make sense in every company, every process, or every application. Examples are: applications that are only used in restricted environments and do not require system interaction; applications that are intended to have a short life span; and applications that will be replaced within a not too distant future.” This chapter will explore views on the negative aspects of standardisation, i.e. problems that need consideration.
3.1
The theoretical view
In literature, some main problems were identified. First if all, some standards specifications are over-generalised [Egyedi, 1999]. As such, the specification may not be of use, since it may not be applicable. The
motivation is that specifications that are too general need modification, and if a standard is modified, it may not be possible to ensure interoperability. Two organisations may origin from the same standard, but modify it in two directions. Another problem for standards is that they may differ in their XML basis [Carroll, 2000]. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is created to be platform independent, but can also be modified to suite specific purposes. This means that XML schemas may differ, and these schemas constrain the use of XML, which in turn constrains standards inter-operability. Besides schemas, XML-based standards may also differ in their business object ontology and defined business documents. There exists a multitude of standards for B2B exchanges. Examples are: RosettaNet, ebXML, cXML, xCBL, XML/EDI, just to mention a few. Currently, these standards are poorly integrated [Burrows, 1999; Carroll, 2000]. Poor integration refers to that organisations using the standards may not connect easily, meaning that business process integration is not as easily performed as desired. The poor integration abilities between standards is partly caused by the hunt for market dominance, since this hunt may make companies more reluctant to share information that would enable inter-operability [Harrelson, 2000; Filos and Banahan, 2000; Carroll, 2000]. Different organisations involved in developing standards may want “their” standard to come into a dominating position on the market, in order to be able to make money out of it. One consequence may be a disintegration of the standardisation development. One commonly mentioned criticism against standardisation development is that it takes too long [Burrows, 1999]. There are often many stakeholders involved in standards development, which means that there are many opinions to consider. Furthermore, negotiation time may be prolonged when trying to get all participants to agree. As a consequence, standards development may not keep up with rapid technology developments. Besides the complexity of the standards development process, standards size and different levels may affect user organisations and their ability to integrate standards. Connected to practically all the above
points is the risk standards are facing of not being used [Cargill, 1999]. The reason is that the responsible development organisations may fail to promote why their product is better than all others. A standard does needs a critical mass of providers and procurers before it sells itself [Egyedi, 1999]. To summarise, the positive aspects mentioned for standards by the theoretical view were: • Over-generalised standards specifications • Standards may differ in their XML basis, causing inter-operability problems • Current standards are poorly integrated • Some standards developers hunt for market dominance • Standards development takes too long, and cannot keep up with e.g. technology developments • Standards themselves risk not being used, e.g. if their developers fail to promote them As with the positive aspects, the negative ones concern different perspectives: standards development, content and actual usage. However, the mentioned problems differ considerably in focus, ranging from basic standards content to the ways in which standards are developed. The next section presents the practice view of the negative aspects.
3.2
The practice view
The interviews conducted revealed a number of negative aspects with standards. One is that standards adoption is associated with high costs. This is also the first thing many companies see – the costs associated with making the move to standards and possibly replacing existing software. If, for example, a large supplier suggests that a customer starts to use a certain standard, the customer may be reluctant to adopt this idea if there are many legacy applications in the organisation. Should the approaching organisation, the supplier in our example, create software containing this standard, the customer organisation probably would suspect that the supplier only wants to sell more software. Another aspect requiring a lot of effort is standards implementation. There is also a fear of
loss of security in business transactions. Some organisations want to create and send information in a coded format, and thus avoid that other companies understand them. The motivation for not adopting a standard is then that the standard makes organisational activities one step less secure. Another problem is the possibility of a general reluctance to change the way of doing business. Instead of adopting a standard, organisations want to use e.g. translation tools, adaptors, or connectors that will preserve internal standards, while still allowing communication with others through mediating translation tools. This approach is not very efficient, but it exists. Reasons are that organisations want to maintain their uniqueness in relation to their competitors, and thus avoid standards just to be different. One respondent suggested that the standard should focus on interfaces only and leave the internal workings of an organisation aside. By doing so, the organisations would get to keep their ways of working. The problem of standards enforcement was mentioned during the interviews as well, with the motivation that it strongly limits the possibility to select the standard that best suites the organisational needs. Instead, the organisation is told what standard to use by its partners. Another problem concerns standards specifications, in that these may be ambiguous. Ambiguity causes inter-operational problems with other organisations that have implemented the same standard, since they may have interpreted the specifications differently. Both, however, believe that their interpretation is correct. The cause of the ambiguity was said to be standards flexibility. As an example, many standards include a set of optional fields, thus enabling the creation of many different variations of the standards. Incompatibility can also be caused by the different formalisms that standards can be based on. Formalism in this case refers to either Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) or XML as a basis in the B2B standard. Problems in this category either concern a separate formalism, or the relationships between the two. Starting with the latter, there is a difference in opinion regarding whether XML should replace EDI or if they should co-exist.
One motivation against EDI is that organisations do not want to adopt anything that is said to have a “dead end”. EDI is only prepared to deal with main scenarios for business transactions, and do not manage exceptions well. Exceptions that do occur require a huge effort to correct. The use of XML, however, may cause performance drawbacks, since XML is not the most technologically efficient way of doing things. Even though this is a problem, one respondent commented that the benefits exceed this drawback at the end of the day. A somewhat two-faced problem mentioned was that there are many standards to chose from. The ability and opportunity to select a standard is good, but not practical with respect to the size of the selection set. It is therefore difficult for organisations to know which standards to pay attention to, which ones to embrace, and which ones to adopt. Many standards are overlapping in some ways, making the selection even more difficult. Most companies also have their own opinions on what the right set of standards is. Most standards have been developed during a short period of time. The development of software support for standards has not kept the same pace, and the currently available support is therefore not good enough. There has been some indication that organisations want to avoid being involved in technical aspects themselves, and that they therefore seek to be provided with functioning software. Within the next few years, application providers must prioritise small software solutions or packages that support standards. Such support does not exist at the moment, and no software provider has a clue in how to create the support, according to one respondent. Reluctance of dealing with technical aspects is displayed through a frequent outsourcing of standards software in organisations. The organisations therefore often have little or no knowledge about standards and how to use them. This is a major problem, since is means that many organisations use standards, but do not know how or why. The problem is accentuated by the fact that most available guidelines are technical and therefore do not provide easy help organisation to understand standards.
To summarise, the negative aspects mentioned for standards by the practice view were: • There may exist a general reluctance to change the way of doing business. • There is a fear of loss of security in business transactions. • Standards adoption is associated with high costs. • Standard enforcement strongly limits the possibility to select the standard that bests suites the organisational needs. • Standards specifications may be ambiguous, and could therefore be interpreted in different ways. • There are different formalisms used in standards, mainly EDI or XML. • There are too many standards options to choose from. • It takes time to reach a common view among multiple business partners. • Software support for standards is not good enough. • Organisations lack knowledge on how to use standards. Some of the respondents first claimed that they had no arguments against standardisation, e.g. against having a common way of representing business processes, and a common language. One respondent actually said: “Who is arguing against standardisation?” However, the same respondents could see some problems with standards during their implementation, which may indicate that the respondents find standardisation a must, in spite of the problems it may bring. In any case, they consider standards as bringing more benefits than they do problems.
4
Comparing the views of theory and practice
This chapter will merge the theoretical and the practice views and discuss the similarities and differences between them.
4.1
Relationship between positive aspects of standardisation
In general, the two views agree on what standards can do for organisations. The central
aspect seems to be the enabling of interoperability between organisations at several levels: a business level with global communication; a process level in which business processes in different organisations can be connected; and a system level that concerns platform independency and co-operation between new and old software. The goal with inter-operability is to achieve reductions in both time and costs. A common representation and language is needed, if not required, if interoperability in its true sense will become a reality. It is, however, not only interesting to look at the positive aspects of standardisation as such, but also to examine the differences between the theoretical and the practice view. We do so by illustrating the results in Table 1. The leftmost column lists the positive aspects. A capital “X” in one or both of the other columns indicates whether or not the aspect was explicitly mentioned by a view, while a lower-case “x” indicates an implicit or an indirect reference to the aspect. There are great similarities between the two views regarding the positive aspects of B2B standardisation. Both views explicitly discuss inter-operability on the process and system levels, as well as the possibility of achieving cost reduction. Business-level inter-operability is only implicitly mentioned in the practice view, however, when they discuss connectivity between divisions, evolvement of business models, etc. The global aspect is not explicitly mentioned, unless we count in the fact that business divisions nowadays need not be located in the same place or country, or that global connectivity is enabled through a “common language”. The practice view explicitly mentions the necessity of this common representation and language as an important contribution of standards. Time reduction is the subject least touched upon by the two views. It is in fact only implicitly mentioned by the theoretical view in saying that partner networks can be created more rapidly using a standard. The main point made there was to achieve more efficient use of information technology in organisations, which is why we claim that the aspect was only implicitly mentioned.
4.2
Relationship between negative aspects of standardisation
As with positive aspects, the interoperability issue is the centre of attention also for the negative aspects. Mainly, this concerns the risk of failing to achieve inter-operability. Five aspects illustrate the importance of the inter-operability problem, by being possible causes of it: 1. It takes time to reach a common view among multiple business partners. If these business partners, in this case referring to standards development partners, fail to reach a common view, they may not achieve the interoperability that they sought. 2. Standards specifications may be ambiguous and flexible. If standards can be altered and interpreted in different ways, inter-operability cannot always be guaranteed. 3. There may exist a general reluctance to change the way of doing business. To adopt a standard means a change to the ways of working, and business that resist change will in the end not be interoperable. 4. There is a hunt for market dominance. Two organisations that use different standards may not be able to interoperate if the hunt for market dominance continues, since the development organisations probably will be reluctant to share information that could enable inter-operation. 5. Standards are poorly integrated. Interoperability will not be enabled if standards are poorly integrated due to differences in e.g. formalisms and overgeneralised specifications. Besides the fear of not achieving interoperability, reluctance to change is the second main problem in standardisation. This may cause failure to inter-operate. Furthermore, a reluctance to change may be the cause for standards not being used. If the organisations decide not to change, they will probably not use available standards.
There can be many causes for this reluctance to change. Firstly, there is a lack of people in standards user organisations who are skilled in standardisation issues, i.e. who know how standards work and what they can do for a company. The fact that other organisations use the same standard as you may also enable them to understand your documents, which would make the business transactions somewhat less secure. Standards implementation is also associated with high costs. A company that does not have the financial resources necessary, they will be reluctant to change. Lastly, there is a lack of software support today. The research results show that organisations do not want to be involved in technical details, but that they want applications to do the standards work for them. The lack of software may therefore be a deciding factor in whether or not to change. It is often the case that standards are enforced on an organisation, in which case they are forced to take on the high costs. However, enforcement also reduces the problem to select one standard out of the many. Table 2 illustrates the comparison between the theoretical view and the practice view. There are only two negative aspects that both sides mention explicitly: that standards development takes time, and the risk of not using standards (part of the reluctance to change aspect in the practice view). During the interviews, aspects of differing formalisms and reluctance to change were mentioned. These aspects were only implicitly stated in literature, e.g. when discussing differences in XML basics. Lastly, both views implicitly mention the risk of failing to achieve inter-operability. The implicitness lies in that many of the other aspects may cause this failure. Let us now turn our attention to the differences. The theoretical view mentioned aspects like: market dominance, overgeneralised standards specifications, and poorly integrated standards. The practice view on the other hand, mentioned aspects like: standards ambiguity and flexibility, lack of knowledge, standards enforcement, poor software support, high costs, less security, and too many standards to choose from. It seems that the researchers takes a more general view of standards, while
the practice view is more detailed on actual standards use and consequences. Few common denominators indicate that there are different expectations between the two views. In the practice view, there are also a few more negative aspects than in the theoretical view. The underlying reasons for this requires more research.
4.3
Summary of positive and negative aspects
The central issue, regardless of positive or negative aspects, is inter-operability between organisations. The mere enabling of interoperability is regarded as positive, while there may also be a risk of failing to achieve it. Regarding cost, the financial implication of standardisation, the positive aspect is that costs can be cut using standards, while the negative aspect is that standardisation is associated with high costs. These comments seem to contradict each other, but not necessarily. The key is the perspective with which we view standardisation. It seems like standards may mean high costs in an introductory phase and in a short-term sense, but that costs can actually be cut in the longterm sense. With this interpretation, the comments on cost need not contradict one another. One interesting aspect mentioned by both views is the possible problems with standards specifications, or with the ambiguity in them. Several things may cause this ambiguity: the possibility to modify a standard, the possibility that two organisations may interpret the standard in two different ways, and the built-in standards flexibility. The analysis of the results reveal three categories into which the opinions on both positive and negative aspects fall: 1. Standards content 2. Standards development 3. Standards use Standards content concerns features of the standards, such as what and how much of business communication that they cover, underlying formalism, etc. Standards development focus on the process with which standards are developed. For example, standards development is criticised for taking too much time, which is partly caused by the time needed
to create a common view between the many companies involved in developing the standards. The fact that there were more negative aspects than there were positive could be an indication that standards bring more problems than they are worth. Still, companies do use standards to a rapidly increasing extent, which in turn would indicate that the negative effects, although being many, still do not overweigh the opportunities. Companies seem willing to accept problems, as long as standards provide what they promise to.
5
Challenges in the future of B2B standardisation
The mentioned aspects, of both the positive and the negative kind, imply four challenges for future standards work. All active participants in the standardisation area should address the challenges, whether they are standards developers, users or researchers. 1. Facilitate standards usage and implementation. Several factors contribute to making standards usage complex: ambiguity in standards specifications; too much flexibility in the standards leading to a risk of failing to achieve inter-operability; and that there is a lack of knowledge in organisations concerning what standards are, how they work, and how to use them in an optimal way. Current research and developments seem to focus on technical details and variations, while not paying as much attention to developing comprehensive usage guidelines and standards implementation processes. Overcoming specification ambiguity is therefore an important step. Another step is to enable organisations to validate their standards implementation against some set of test in order to ensure compatibility with other organisations using the same standard. If standards developers fail to make their standards easier to implement, they face the risk of the standards not being used. The standards developers themselves mention that the lack of knowledge about standards in organisations is a problem. Unless standards usage and implementation is made easier, this knowledge will not be increased. One respondent also mentioned that the businessoriented approach is a greater challenge that the
technical aspects of standards. The motivation is that it is not only the technical parts that need to be standardised, but the business process parts as well. Besides changing the standards specifications themselves, there is also a need for an explicitly defined implementation process. This process would enable organisations to know what to expect during the implementation and its different phases, and would also contribute to enhance the knowledge in standards. 2. Develop small application packages to support standards usage This challenge has already been touched upon in this paper, that software developers must develop small application packages to support standards usage in organisations. Existing support is not good enough and needs improvement. If there is success in creating these applications, organisations could implement and use standards by simply using the software. If such usage is simple to perform, the chances of increasing the organisational inhouse knowledge about standards becomes higher. One respondent suggested that large software companies should work together to accomplish an application solution for standards, since the problem is the same regardless which platform the customers prefer (e.g. Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP, etc.). A facilitating, and necessary, factor would be openness in standards development. Most specifications today are publicly available, which enables software companies to participate in developing specifications and to build solutions of greater quality. 3. Increase the level of knowledge about standards in businesses There is a clear need to educate organisational staff in how standards work and in how to use them. One approach is to develop business-oriented guidelines that focus on facilitating standards usage, while disregarding as much as possible from the technical details. Furthermore, introduction and instruction books need to be written, courses need to be developed and offered, etc., that will enable organisational staff to increase their skills and ultimately to achieve full B2B inter-operability.
4. Balancing between the need to modify and the need to standardise The final challenge concerns how, if possible, to make standard specifications less flexible. Today standards are almost always modified, due to the differences in requirements and needs of different organisations. It is therefore a challenge how to make specifications that ensure inter-operability, while still enable modifications to be made. The balance between the need to modify and the need to standardise clearly require more research. Returning to what was said in the beginning of the paper: by discussing and addressing these challenges, organisations can better understand each other, thus creating a better basis for improving standards, as well as for improving organisational knowledge about standards.
References Anderson, M. and Allen, R. (1999), Workflow Interoperability – Enabling E-Commerce, White Paper, Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), April 1, 1999 Burrows, J. (1999), Information Technology standards in a changing world: the role of the users, Computer Standards & Interfaces, pp.323-331, Elsevier Science B.V. Cargill, C. (1999), “Consortia and the Evolution of Information Technology Standardization”, Proceedings of the 1st IEEE Conference on Standardization and Innovation in Information Technology (SIIT’99), Aachen, Germany, September 15-17, 1999 Carroll, M. (2000), Beneath the Vortals:The Lowdown on XML-based B2B Standards, Web Techniques, February 2000 Egyedi, T. (1999), “‘Tension between Standardisation and Flexibility’ Revisited: A Critique”, Proceedings of the 1st IEEE Conference on Standardization and Innovation in Information Technology (SIIT’99), Aachen, Germany, September 15-17, 1999 Filos, E. and Banahan, E. (2000), Towards the SMART Organisation: An Emerging Organisational Paradigm and the Contribution of the European RTD Programmes, http://www.ispo.cec.be/istka2/al22.html, as is: 2000-11-08 Filos, E. and Ouzounis, V. (2000), Virtual Organisations: Technologies, Trends, Standards and the Contribution of the European RTD Programmes, http://www.ispo.cec.be/istka2/al2-2.html, as is: 2000-11-08 Franke, U. (1999), The virtual web as a new entrepeneurial approach to network organizations, Entrepeneurships & Regional Development, 11 (1999), pp.203-229 Harrelson (2000), The B2B Standards War: Connect or Die!, EAI Journal, October 2000, pp.42-48 Intel Corporation (1999), Intel To Begin Implementing Standards-Based E-Business Processes In 2000, http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/In061099.htm, as is: 2000-10-19, Intel Corporation McMahon-Cost, M. and Wilt, D. (1999), Ariba Integrates cXML with Microsoft BizTalk Framework: Industry Leaders Work Together to Enhance Business-to-Business eCommerce, News Release September 13, 1999, Ariba Ousterhout, J. (2000), Managing Trading Partners, EAI Journal, October 2000, pp.89-92 Seminerio, M. (2000), B2B 2 The World, eWeek, Vol.17, No.35, pp.51-55 Shelton, H. and Fielding, S. (1999), POET To Support Commerce XML (cXML); Joins Industry Alliance Expanding XML for e-commerce, http://www.poet.com/news/ press_releases/1999/0208.html, as is: 2000-10-18, POET Software Vercoulen, F. and van Wegberg, M. (1999), “Standard Selection Modes in Dynamic, Complex Industries: Creating Hybrids between Market Selection and Negotiated Selection of Standards”, Proceedings of the 1st IEEE Conference on Standardization and Innovation in Information Technology (SIIT’99), Aachen, Germany, September 15-17, 1999
Table 1: Comparing the views regarding positive aspects of standardisation
Positive aspect
Theoretical view
Practice view
Common representation and language
X
Cost reduction
X
X
Time reduction
x
Business level interoperability
X
x
Process level interoperability
X
X
System level interoperability
X
X
Table 2: Comparing the views regarding negative aspects of standardisation
Negative aspect Market dominance
Theoretical view
Practice view
X
Standards ambiguity and too much flexibility
X
Over-generalised standards specifications
X
Poorly integrated standards
X
Failure to achieve interoperability
x
x
Differing formalisms
x
X
Lack of knowledge
X
Standards enforcement
X
Lack of software support
X
High costs
X
Less security
X
Reluctance to change
x
X
Development time takes too long
X
X
Risk of not using standards
X
X
Too many standards to choose from
X
