In actuality, AI was composed of three main branches: the KBS (knowledge-based system), RBS (rule-based system), and ANN (artificial neural network). To date, only the RBS has survived in commerce, where it is commonly found in the form of BRMSes (business rules management systems).
The biggies in this category have evolved into massive systems that can do almost anything a developer might want. The problem is that it takes years to learn all the tricks and traps; by then, there’s a new system to learn.
Customers and vendors spend far too much time comparing standard benchmarks, rather than taking the time to design tests that are truly representative of real-world problems. The trouble with a BRMS is that it takes 50 percent to 70 percent of the time up front to think things out -- before anyone writes a line of code -- while most project managers prefer immediate results.
All told, there are very few real BRMS success stories when compared with the many attempts that never made it past Phase Two. Is this truly the best AI had to offer?
-- James Owen
B-to-B e-commerce
As the Web economy began to cool in 2000, any savvy entrepreneur who was still in the dot-com game latched onto b-to-b as the hand to play. The hot buzzword of the next-generation online business model was “disintermediation” -- nothing less than cutting out the middleman (and not much more). As it turned out, however, using the Web to wed partners and wheedle deals behind the scenes wasn’t a recipe for runaway success, any more than the consumer-facing e-commerce model that came before it.
For one thing, the integration technologies necessary for it to work -- such as Web services -- simply weren’t in place in 2000. For another, there wasn’t much incentive for the supply side to participate -- why pay a b-to-b vendor to enter a bidding war in which you’d be forced to reduce your prices and compete for customers you thought you’d already won? Finally, b-to-b’s basic premise failed to recognize that, unlike the world of consumer sales, business relationships are predicated on a lot more than just cost and availability.
But it may be too soon to label b-to-b as down for the count. The growing market for SOA (service-oriented architecture) and modular applications may prove to be an ideal opportunity for the enterprising infrastructure players -- provided that, this time, they can check their ambitions with a little realism.
-- N.M.
