Integration as a Service for BPO and SaaS

I've said it already, but I think the most progressive part of the conference so far has been the discussion of how enterprises that use business process outsourcing (BPO) and software as a service (SaaS) vendors will be able to integrate that data into their decision making processes and business event streams. May people probably don't realize just how prevalent BPO is, even in places that think they don't outsource.

When you start to think about it in a certain way, BPO and SaaS is really just another type of specialization. We don't all farm our own food - we source that activity to farms. We don't generate our own electricity - we ask the electric company to do that. Car manufacturers don't manufacture rubber, or tires - they get different companies to do that for them.

We're not talking about the oursourcing of application development to offshore companies, here. We are talking about looking to companies that are already experts in an industry to provide other businesses with that expertise or a product that results from that specialized expertise. The question of integrating more sophisticated information from that process into our own enterprises, though, is the challenge that Sohaib and others have been talking about. I think it's very exciting.