Welcome Back Tradex! And Some Personal News ...
This morning, Ariba's Karen Master woke me up at 4:00 AM to pre-brief me on the most exciting news to come out of Sunnyvale in years. This was the voice of someone who had clearly pulled a few all nighters preparing for a massive announcement. Karen asked me to wait to Monday for the PR Newswire announcement at 8:15 EST, but I simply could not hold back any longer. So here goes with the news: Ariba is bringing back the Tradex platform. "The much loved piece of Marketplace plumbing was collecting too much dust," remarked Master. So “we had to bring it back, to meet the needs of our global customers." Daniel Aegerter and Jared Rodriguez, the founders of Tradex, who made out "like absolute bandits" according to one former Ariba executive now sitting on his own beach, will be coming out of retirement to run the operating unit. Mark Hoffman will serve as an advisor as well.
But what is the biggest news of all? Yours truly has been hired by Ariba with the title of "Tradex Evangelist". My goal will be to convince companies why they should trade paperclips online with the ultimate goal of cashing out their private exchanges, making billions from IPO proceeds. I've been armed with a massive expense account and a trusty HP calculator to model how much the returns will be (and there's a rumor that I'll even get a few babes -- or cookies, as some call them -- to travel around with me as I jet to exotic locales to spread the marketplace gospel). Wish me luck. Because after all, spend does not always matter ...
In related news, Vinnie Mirchandani has decided to join SAP and will "lead a team focused on training account executives to dramatically reduce discount offers to CIOs." Congrats, Vinnie!
- Jason Busch
But what is the biggest news of all? Yours truly has been hired by Ariba with the title of "Tradex Evangelist". My goal will be to convince companies why they should trade paperclips online with the ultimate goal of cashing out their private exchanges, making billions from IPO proceeds. I've been armed with a massive expense account and a trusty HP calculator to model how much the returns will be (and there's a rumor that I'll even get a few babes -- or cookies, as some call them -- to travel around with me as I jet to exotic locales to spread the marketplace gospel). Wish me luck. Because after all, spend does not always matter ...
In related news, Vinnie Mirchandani has decided to join SAP and will "lead a team focused on training account executives to dramatically reduce discount offers to CIOs." Congrats, Vinnie!
- Jason Busch
Let's party like it's 1999 ...
Also heard that each instance is $4.3MM. Ariba should be in black again after they sell two or three.
PS...Posters Note: Jason is only getting 75% of first three sold over the web...further demonstrating the power of the new media.
Happy 4/1
Emptoris will reveal its financials and simultaneously use its renewing IT industry analyst contracts to receive glowing reviews
IDC will see this and re-invoke its e-sourcing vendor evaluation
Forrester will actually review the systems from the vendors that it evaluates in its wave reports
Gartner will publish how the $2B contract management market has finally arrived (with 0.05 probability)
Aberdeen will be bought by Jigsaw.com
AMR will allow itself to be bought by Gartner. Bruce, Michael, and Shep will finally and thankfully get a chance to cash out and retire.
Lora Cecere, Lori Orlov and Karen Peterson will join together to form a new advisory service focused on helping women excel in the supply chain world via deep sensitivity training, collaborative workplace skills, process facilitation, and gender diversity soft skills.
SAP will acquire Coupa to make it go away, and then will give the source code to Oracle developers and
customers while inserting small pieces of code which will monitor Oracle customer systems.
Larry Ellison will give away 1/2 his wealth to charity to respond to Bill Gates, but also so he can get knighted and pick up more women
Ariba will be taken private by some private equity firms who will then re-IPO the firm and force it to buy all their portfolio companies. It will then acquire eHarmony.com and hire Dave Nelson to tout the 25 variables of deep compatability that it has found between a buyer and suppliers on the ASN.
Procuri will offer a new screen saver to launch its "tip for the day" desktop calendar and a new koosh ball to hand out in Vegas
AT Kearney, in an unheralded move, will actually buy ISM and CAPS Research. wait, that already happened.
Dr. Monczka will check himself into the ASU medical center to improve a 20 year malignant ego growth
Theresa Metty will use her new funds to expand her bar in Mexico to be a new nearshoring supply management think tank conference center and Harley distributor.
VerticalNet will reveal that in fact it has been a testbed for Carnegie Mellon's program for advanced financial re-engineering
ICG Commerce will unveil a new virtual GPO marketplace, powered by Corporate United and other demand aggregation providers. Mobshop, AlphaDog, BizBots, and other service providers will emerge from chapter 11 to join HedgeHog, Sorcity, and WhyAbe to form an open-source community of e-sourcing tools to power this community.
The SpendFool will receive a combination of death threats, cease-and-desist orders, and nasty responses on this blog by people who have no sense of humor.
For the rest of you, I "fell on my bells" for your pleasure.
Jason, thanks for reminding me to post on this most foolish of apres-days!
Stay foolish all.