The problem with the B2Bs and their diagrams was simple. They assumed the world revolved around them. From the perspective of the companies that were supposed to integrate into trading exchanges and office supply exchanges, the list of online services that needed to be integrated into was way too long. And the risks were too high.

The reaction from most internal IT organizations has been to revolt against all these requirements for integration by simply shutting down. The process of selling a new system into most companies has become hopelessly difficult.

In the last month, I have talked to over 10 CEOs of young Silicon Valley start-ups. Each one has said the same thing to me: "The enterprise sales cycle is too long, and the rewards are too small." My guess is that this has become a VC mantra.

People joke that the job of a CTO at a big company is simply not to get fired. Risk nothing, do nothing new, react only to new security threats and supposedly you win as a CTO in a big company.

This is a dangerous situation for big companies. Their intransigence is so well know, and their internal bureaucracies are so feared that the vendors are not even bothering to show them innovative solutions.

Instead, these start-ups are focusing their energies on small businesses. Companies that are willing to make fast decisions. The result will be a new cadre of smaller companies that are powered by a collection of productivity tools that could make them lethal competitors for the bigger, slower giants.

Enter integrated Software as a Service

Sometimes, the greatest risk is taking no risk at all. To a certain extent, that is what could start happening to internal IT departments now. Business users are gving up on their IT departments. Instead, users are increasingly turning to vendors who offer integrated Software as a Service (iSaaS) solutions.

One big advantage to these iSaaS solutions, such as SalesForce.com is that they have already solved integration issues.

Examples:

• Gmail is available on my mobile device. For a business user who wants to get email on their blackberry, or their treo, they can either pay to get their existing Lotus Notes or Exchange infrastructure integrated with a mobile solution, or they can use Google's hosted domain service and enjoy instant free mobile integration. Which service would you prefer?
• SaleForce.com's App Exchange is another example of out of the box integration for everything from analytics to marketing tools.
• For a more specialized example, check out GlobeOp. If you want to start up a hedge fund, GlobeOp can provide you with integrated mid and back office solution. Those integrated solutions include include complex integrations into Value at Risk systems and into external Custodian systems.

The advantage of a service like GlobeOp's is time to market and lower operational risk. They have already done the hard integration work. The integration costs were less of an issue because they could be spread across many customers, and by the time most companies sign up with GlobeOp, the integration to their particular custodian has already been tested by other GlobeOp clients.

Thomas Friedman's adage applies: "Don't outsource to save, outsource to win!"