After 5 years in stealth mode, the EBS (Employee Business Services) product has been revealed as the first application of Rearden Commerce Platform, (from Rearden Commerce, formerly Talaris). This is an entirely service-based approach to, well, services, - hardware and software are entirely looked after by Rearden, leaving the business to focus on their core capabilities.

What's notable is that it appears to be the first complete, integrated (loosely-coupled…) commerce platform built from the ground up using "pure" Services-Oriented Architecture (SOA). They have drifted a little from the WS mothership a little with their own version of BPEL called Services Business Language to support composite event-driven applications, but what's one more spec amongst hundreds. Their platform is user-centric, with identity-based services similar to those of Microsoft's abandoned/mutated Hailstorm project.

But on the other end of the system the rest of the world is viewed as a grid of services, available on demand. Check the diagram on this page, with the EBS application looking after the business employee's interactions such as booking travel and accomodation - the external services are drawn literally as a grid. There's talk on the Reardon site of creating a network effect - presumably if they have followed standard specifications this should be possible irrespective of proprietary implementation.

InfoWorld is raving about the system, and it's received considerable praise from other pundits in the field. Reardon have garnered plenty of practical/financial industry support - they've partnered with American Express and Hewlett-Packard as resellers. Whether or not the company get the uptake they want for that network effect and show they can live up to the fanfare, they've certainly made an impressive arrival.