I was reading up about the new Covast B2B Appliance the BBot. The idea of appliances in a box is nothing new , but I think as a B2B appliance Covast is the first to offer one that offers supply chain end points an easy way to connect to larger partners . BBot promises built in RFID and SOX compliance . Since it is an appliance model meaning you get the box plug it in and you are ready to configure and tweak it to your need . This model is beneficial because as small supplier you get the leveraged benefit of a common platform without a huge IT overhead to integrate with your larger partner and for the large partner it makes their larger integration efforts more easier because previously larger partners had a tough time convincing its suppliers to put the kind of money into integration , or work with a variety of file formats all containing same data , or build out web front ends and rolling them out to partners.
Bbot seems to address all these pain points with an appliance model for supply chain . I am not sure as appliances model picks up we will see lower costs for these appliances ultimately benefiting everyone.
This will be interesting to watch . Read more here
