Open source solution set to transform B2B supply chain operations

Dubbed the ONE (open negotiation environment) platform, Luigi Telesca, a senior researcher at the CREATE-NET research centre in Italy who oversaw its development, says it's designed to "overcome limitations of existing business-to-business (B2B) electronic marketplaces and Internet trading platforms that are run, or dominated, by large corporations". Telesca says the ONE project, which received funding from the European Union, was inspired by the belief that all companies have an equal right to grow, their growth should not be limited by technology, and the technology should be neutral. Hence open source. Users, he says, simply sign up for an account and are able to start negotiations via the platform with other companies immediately. So whether they are looking for partners to create a virtual organisation for a tender bid, or seeking suppliers for a new project, their web browser is the key to establishing a custom business network, sorting out negotiation processes etc. "It's not quite as straightforward as drag-and-drop, but it is fairly simple," says Telesca. "The software is built using simple interfaces so users don't need to know programming. They just have to know their business" He also says that, unlike B2B marketplaces such as Ariba, there is no single company managing the platform, which operates instead across a peer-to-peer web services architecture. "Different users can operate network nodes and information is stored securely on decentralised servers. It is up to users to generate and manage their own negotiations without third-party involvement, akin to the user-generated content creation, collaboration and information sharing that is the backbone of the Web 2.0 era."