Plattner refused to comment on reports that SAP intends to sign a reseller deal with rival B2B firm, Commerce One. Jeffrey Mann, vice president for electronic business strategies at Meta Group, said: "It really has developed.
Graham Opie, director at Vanson Bourne, which conducted the survey for outsourcer CSC, warned that companies must make m-commerce plans an integral part of their existing ecommerce strategies - which themselves leave a lot to be desired.
It's no good sporting a Web site advertising your products - mere first generation stuff: you must have a fully interactive, self-service, customer-centric portal with one-to-one marketing capability.
But Calderoni stood his ground, vowing that the company would break even by next year. While Commerce One ploughed ahead with its SAP partnership, Ariba banked on its alliance with i2 to boost its e-procurement offering.
Given the fiasco over local loop unbundling and the 3G licence debacle, one could be forgiven for thinking electronic content and commerce has burst out of the starting blocks only to trip up. Apart from higher quality and greater flexibility...
The full Behind the Headlines programme can be seen in the Desktop Strategies' Channel (http://www.silicon.com/a37974 ). However, the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) joined the opposition this week with an open letter addressed to Jack Straw.