Here in the Midwest, we have a saying: "If you don't like the weather today, wait — it will change tomorrow."

The same could be said of e-business over the past several years as it underwent a series of sudden and dramatic changes.

Like the weather in the Midwest, e-business has been predictable in its unpredictability, confounding experts with abrupt turns and reversals. It has done what revolutionary technologies almost always do: evolved in ways that few expected or foresaw.

This unpredictability doesn't make things easier for enterprises that want to tap the potential of this new way of doing business without sinking money into technologies or business models that are obsolete almost before they are implemented.

That problem has surfaced most visibly with e-marketplaces, which have experienced a rash of failures. Companies that invested time and money integrating with these failed e-marketplaces have little to show for their investment and may be wondering if e-marketplace participation is worth the hassle.

Fortunately, I have some good news...and some more good news.

First, the good news: e-business has reached the stage of development where change is becoming less radical and more predictable. We'll still see some curveballs, but at least now we know what game we are playing and who is pitching.

Over the past couple years, we've learned that e-business is more about building relationships than creating price wars; that it's at least as valuable for what it does for your existing customers as what it does to attract new customers. And rather than pitting buyers against their suppliers, it enhances the timeliness and quality of the information exchange between companies, their suppliers and their customers.

This experience has shaped the current generation of sell-side e-business applications, which now extend beyond online catalogs to include powerful personalization, configuration and integration capabilities. These applications are driving sell-side strategies that strengthen relationships between distributors and their manufacturer partners, and empower customers by providing better information, faster.

These same sell-side applications that deliver value to existing customers can serve as the foundation for a more powerful and flexible approach to e-marketplace participation.

Using newer connectivity options such as Ariba's Punch-Out and Commerce One's Round Trip, suppliers are beginning to extend the capabilities of their sell-side applications to the e-marketplace environment. This means providing branded, personalized, qualitative information to e-marketplace buyers, increasing the value of the e-marketplace to all participants.

So choices that seemed difficult just six months ago are now becoming easier for suppliers who have created their own B2B selling sites. They have more control over their own enterprise selling strategies, and can test the e-marketplace waters at a level that fits their comfort zone.

This is good news...but as for the weather, always keep an umbrella in the car, just in case. More change is guaranteed!