While not as well known “the West” has a similar version called Ariba. It’s a business to business network reported to have over $300Bln trading over it. CNBC called it the facebook for business and there is plenty online for those that want to know. The Alibaba competitor looks to be called Ariba Discovery. Ariba recently caught my eye as SAP decided to pay $4.7Bln for them and checking the various press releases is using them to go big into “cloud”.

Seriously, what is this post. Russia could have won the “space race”, hell Europe could have won the space race with enough funding. We could end would poverty with enough funding. Could have, might have, if only. Yawn, move on.

In my ever evolving theory that Simpsons episodes can predict the future I am seeing a strange resemblance between Larry and Hank Scorpio http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Hank_Scorpio. The island, the MIG, the beard; its tenuous but I’m calling it.

From what I remember TFL contacts to advertise are very expensive and limited. There is a reason you don't see any electronic billboards on the underground. This is a way for virgin, and others, to advertise to Londons masses. As the use of smartphones weave their way deeper into our daily lives this will only become more valuable.

This is pure headlines because SAP announced they are to acquire Ariba for $4.7bln a few weeks back. Ariba is the #1 SaaS procurement software vendor from sourcing through to payment. I beleive what made Ariba so valuable (10x revenue) was their network of businesses. I would not class myself as an expert but it appears that if you want to source, procure or invoice then you connect your business to your trading partners over this network - it was described as the Facebook for business. A quick guess would be this removes paper from the process, means everything's electronic, reduces cost and other PHB's wet dreams. Reading around it looks like Ariba was kicking Oracle and SAP's booty in this space and their network was growing at a huge rate. There is a lot of opinion on SAP's acquisition of Ariba but if Larry hasn't got this network part then it's Oracle On Demand by another name. I guess SAP think this network is the key, looked at google+ and realised that to build it themselves once an established player is in play is difficult.

Like a number of other posts here, this news makes me smile. Since their DRM fiasco I have boycotted Sony and my resolve strengthened when the Play Station Network got hacked. I avoid their entire brand like the plague and the news their company is failing has brought a smile to an otherwise mundane day.