Hi Tim,
very interesting topic. I agree with your position and I am working in that direction.
Talking about commoditization, I read your comment at OSC "We need an open-source iSync clone". You should take a look at our open source project Sync4j (http://www.sync4j.org): it is quickly becoming the iSync of the open source world. We will also launch an online service pretty soon. Stay tuned...