Why is the Internet not Free?

When companies started using EDI to exchange their business messages (way back in the days of punched card) they needed a way to send the messages to each other. This method needed to be both secure and reliable and from this rose the EDI Value Added Network (VAN).

A number of IT Network companies around the world, normally in conjunction with a telecoms operation, set-up dedicated networks that could carry your business data to any part of the world as long as the recipient had an EDI mailbox. It did not matter if that person used the same EDI VAN as the sender, the networks could communicate and so messages could be reliably exchanged. Obviously the EDI VAN would charge for this service as you were using their network capacity and their servers.

Then along comes the Internet. Over time the Internet has been able to connect any computer to any other computer and this has opened up the opportunity to replace the EDI VAN with other methods of sending and receiving data. The advantage being that as long as the communications method used was an Internet standard, you would not need a specialised piece of software (as you did to communicate with an EDI VAN) and so you could send the messages for Free. So we now see people sending EDI messages using email, FTP, FTPS, SFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, SSH and AS2.

But hang on a minute, whilst you can use all the other methods for free, and no one will object, some people are trying to charge for AS2, and sometimes a hefty premium. I just don't get it. AS2 stands for Applicability Statement 2 and is a WC3 published Internet standard. Therefore we should have the choice to buy it or write it. As long as it conforms to the WC3 standard, all AS2 servers should talk to each other. But this is not what we sometimes hear.

We hear Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) stories that you have to have each version of a given server tested with each version of another server and if all the various server products in existence have not been tested with each other then you cannot guarantee that they will work. When is a standard not a standard? I think this is arrant nonsense, dreamt up to enable people to charge for something that should be free.

Luckily the Open Source community sees through this and there are a number of Open Source AS2 servers available. We use the server from Open AS2 and have used it to establish hundreds of AS2 connections, with the vast majority of the "charged for" servers. In fact, if the last statement is true, we have done the testing that most people charge for. We have had one failure for Open AS2, but when we delved in to it we discovered that the large organisation involved had not conformed to the AS2 standard and that no one had connected a vanilla AS2 server to theirs anyway.

We are firm believers in the value of AS2 for sending business messages via the Internet, we just believe it should not be charged for. We now deploy it Free of Charge for our customers and their Trading Partners should they wish to use it. It reduces the costs of Electronic Message Exchange, greatly enhances the speed of message delivery and provides the most secure and reliable method for exchanging business messages. It's certainly better than the Postal Service :-)

Have a look at Open AS2 today. It could save you time and money.