Electronic invoicing isn't new, writes Nigel Taylor of GXS. It started over 40 years ago with business-to-business (B2B) electronic data interchange (EDI) within private networks. With the advent of the internet in the '90s, e-procurement portals appeared and sparked a frenzy of investment into online industry communities. The e-procurement portals focused on sourcing and purchasing activities, and this narrow focus inevitably led to internet portals dedicated to payables processing.
New York-based BizSlate is launching its cloud-based resource planning tool to give small business a hand with their supply chain challenges. Unlike legacy vendors in that sector, including SAP and Netsuite, the technology is specifically designed for department stores, retail chains, small boutiques and the like. Chief executive Marc Kalman says BizSlate is ideal for companies that have "outgrown QuickBooks" but don't have ample resources at their disposal for IT.
The Middle Eastern and Northern African public cloud services market will see strong growth in 2013, experts predict. The increase in spending will represent a 24.5-percent increase from 2012, with revenue forecast to reach $462.3m in 2013, according to Gartner. The Middle Eastern and Northern African public cloud services market is forecast by the research group to grow 13.4 percent in 2012 to total $371.2m, compared to $110bn worldwide.
