Back to the Future of EDI

In my last post I looked at the benefits of using the Internet to exchange business messages electronically rather than proprietary Value Added Networks (VANS). One on the problems with the VAN approach is that customers are normally expected to have a specialised, normally proprietary, piece of software to allow the message exchange. Now this software is not normally proprietary to the Network, and your EDI software does not need to match your trading partners EDI software, but you still need specialist software.

Obviously with the Internet comes the advantage of standards based message exchange. Whilst we favour the use of AS2 as the communications protocol, preferably Free AS2, we are happy to use most Internet standards for communication. This is because by using open standards it makes it easier to engage trading partners in the exchange of electronic documents.

I actually thought, regardless of whether companies charge for AS2, that all EDI and XML message exchange was moving to Open communications standards. It was therefore a great surprise to me to find that one trading partner of a customer was trying to insist that they install a proprietary piece of communications software to exchange invoices with them. When we questioned this we were told that whilst in theory their software could support the open standards, their software provider preferred that they use the software providers own communications protocol. This was even worse than the software needed for EDI VAN communications because what the software provider was trying to say was that to exchange any messages with their customer you must use the software houses own communications software.

The IT industry has a habit of inventing solutions to problems that do not exist and here is a prime case. Having been offered the options of email, FTP, HTTP(S), SSH, EDI VAN and AS2, a software provider was trying to insist upon their own proprietary solution. Having insisted (with our customers permission) that we would not install proprietary software, the trading partner went for email (but only after days of delay), not our favourite method, which works OK.

So having moved from the world of proprietary networks and associated software, to the glorious open world of the Internet, are we really going to step back to proprietary? I hope this is an isolated instance, because otherwise we may as well go back to EDI VANs, and I don't think that helps anyone.

The exchange of business documents offers many benefits to businesses both large and small, reducing costs, reducing errors and it has environmental benefits too. Putting barriers in the way of message exchange reduces likely uptake and, when as above, it is an unnecessary barrier it is just silly.