Technology Focus Part 1 To Host or Not To Host?

In a true SOA environment, the "options" you select would be true Web services, and highly configurable. But we haven't really reached that level of sophistication yet with hosted direct commerce systems.

Many companies actually don't want customized systems, because they understandably are afraid they'll become "orphaned" as the standard version of their system is enhanced in future versions. Thus, there's a growing receptivity to SaaS in the e-commerce world.