Many businesses plan to use eCommerce to connect their accounting and ERP systems to their business partners. However connecting systems together is neither easy nor straightforward. Unless systems can communicate properly and effectively, the anticipated business benefits will not arise. Many people agree that XML has a major role to play in making this work. But in practice what must you do make it work?

Commerce One has to address this very real problem with the many companies whose systems we interconnect using Commerce One's MarketSite business-to-business portal.

The first part of this talk will explain the problems that need to be solved covering: Documents, Choreography, Messaging and Transport.

The second part of the talk will address, in more detail, some of the standards initiatives that are addressing the barriers described in the first part such as Microsoft's BizTalk and SOAP, consortia based approaches such as ebXML and RosettaNet as well as standards groups such as the IETF and W3C.

In summary, from the first part of this presentation, managers who are responsible for or are planning to integrate their company's systems into an eCommerce environment will understand an approach they can follow to tackle the work and what are the major problems that they will need to overcome.

From the second part of the presentation managers understand the major initiatives that are addressing the integration problem and will be better positioned to identify which solution or approach will be best for them.