The biggest blunder Ariba made in launching its SaaS — oops, “cloud” — strategy a few years back was not releasing solutions that lagged the market in a functional capability (Ariba Buyer — now P2P in a SaaS environment — quickly caught up to many of the capabilities in the CD version), but rather delivering on an integration strategy that allowed easy migration to its SaaS solutions for enterprise customers. Moreover, many Ariba P2P prospects expressed concern over the limitations of Ariba P2P integration in a SaaS environment in the following areas, among others: multi-ERP integration, integration to custom ERP packages, asset management integration and VMS integration. Yet with a recent partnership announcement with Hubspan, these valid concerns may prove to be an issue of the past.
According to the joint announcement, by “Leveraging Hubspan’s cloud-based business integration platform, Ariba will enable companies to seamlessly connect multiple ERP and other backend systems to their partners using the Ariba Commerce Cloud.”

[…] Two Years Too Late? Ariba and Hubspan Partner to Address Cloud Integration (enterpriseirregulars.com) […]