The issues, of course, are the responsibilities that come along with any development project:

• Even with the insulation of web services and encapsulation of objects, your code will break occasionally, and every feature request needs to have a budgetary request along with it. • Perhaps even more important, developing it yourself risks re-inventing the wheel. Product companies are able to leverage lessons from their customers, so the products you buy are likely to be more finely honed than any you build.

Obviously, this is just the latest twist to the classic build-or-buy conundrum. But the cloud, the infrastructure of Web services, and the commercial ecosystem provide new options that can lead to more flexible long-run solutions.

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