And this is where the sore point is. When multiple businesses need to talk, and with the hype of XML, and the dearth of a common standard, I think the industry needs some direction. Someone has to make a standard of what the information exchange should look like. Having said that, I also know its so difficult to achieve that, because standardization and competition are not good bedfellows. They are orthogonal in my view.
Every company wants a competitive edge in their standard.
Hence there cant be a single standard. So for the time being the industry bleeds and thus the sole leader will emerge eventually after the battle is over. Microsoft has started talking with Biztalk and Commerce One and SAP are silently attacking SAP installations. In all good published articles, one begins the definition of the full word and then abbreviate it if one wants. I used to mean SME as Subject Matter Expert.