Alibaba vs. Ariba?
I’ve always been surprised by how many advertising-driven supplier directory models continue to position themselves as sourcing tools for procurement organizations. The closest that a provider has come to pulling this off is MFG.c…
Could Ariba Discovery Finally Scale a Challenging Business Model? (Part 2)
In the first post in this series looking at Ariba Discovery, I provided a high-level overview of what the Discovery marketplace solution provides. In this post, I’ll share some details about the traction Ariba is receiving with the solution. And in the final post coming up, I’ll provide a walkthrough of the application and how […]
A Review of Ariba Discovery (Part 1)
At Ariba LIVE this spring, I got a walkthrough and demo of Ariba’s latest release, Discovery, a web marketplace that most closely resembles sites like MFG.com and cBoxBid, matching buyers and sellers in an environment that is free to buyers — or as Ariba likes to say, in their marketing spin, “matching buyers and sellers […]
Thomas Accelerates the Growth of Ketera’s Network Business
It seems that being a marketplace is back in vogue these days. But this time around — based on the strategies of MFG.com, Ariba and Ketera — there appears to be two keys to being successful: building scale and building liquidity (versus following a Field of Dreams “if you build it they will come” type […]
Friday Rant: Ariba’s Business Strategy Amounts to Supplier Wealth Redistribution For Large Vendors
Earlier this week, Spend Matters broke the news that Ariba was raising supplier network fees this fall. We also covered the news and provided analysis in much more detail in a free, downloadable research brief. But the purpose of this Friday Rant i…
IBM and Ariba Ink Partnership for LotusLive — A New Level of Network Collaboration
This morning, Ariba and IBM announced a partnership to integrate LotusLive into Ariba Discovery, Ariba’s free supplier discovery tool (and supplier directory / marketing / lead generation service). While on the surface, this relationship has all the makings of a Barney deal — for example, why isn’t there a bigger collaboration involving other IBM groups, […]
