Exchange build-outs: hype or hope? Public exchanges went bust. Can private exchanges fulfill the promise of B2B collaboration?

摘要

Talk to Memec's Colin Black about why his company decided to deploy an Internet-based private trade exchange, and you'll hear about business goals, not technology components. Even though Black is an information technology (IT) executive, and understands the mix of new IT infrastructure pieces needed for an exchange, he says executives aren't after a technology migration, "The decision process behind a private exchange is a matter of attaining goals such as improving managers access to information, supporting collaboration with partners, and simply making operations more efficient," says Black, Memec's vice president of global information systems and technology. "No one really says, 'We need a private trade exchange.'" Yet a private trade exchange is what Memec has built, using an enterprise application integration (EAI) software layer and other technology components. Initially, the Thames, U.K.-based global distributor of semiconductors used exchange technology to aggregate data from multiple internal systems, and now Memec is beginning to use the exchange for collaboration with key suppliers such as Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip manufacturer Intel.