For example, engineers who cannot fly out to attend a meeting can attend an on-line design meeting. Sterne says that privacy is important. While e2open is talked about as a public network, people have their own private spaces on the network. It's reliable, secure, and confidential. It's not a public platform where people can see what you're doing.
Standardization also is crucial to an open exchange.
According to Sterne, by following an open platform and ensuring that standards are consistent with RosettaNet, a standardized interface for e-commerce, the exchange will appeal to a much broader audience. While we do have engines on which we are basing our collaboration, we are really trying to build an open standard interface layer that will connect different types of advanced planning platforms. We clearly have tried to select industry's leading platforms to build open standards to seamlessly connect into our exchange. Collaboration, communication, and standardization are hallmarks of an open exchange. They don't have to re-input data.