In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Tom
Karcher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>Could anyone in the group give me a sense for van charges from:
>
>IBM, Sterling and GEIS?
>
>Do they all charge by the kilocharacter? What are the mailbox charges
>monthly?
>
>What's the average cost of sending a single PO and PO Ack - assume single
>ship to and ship from 100 line items in a sinle ISA.
I can only speak from experience of the situation in the UK, which is
probably not what you want, but may nevertheless be of interest for some
list members for purposes of comparison.
There are five VANs which are commonly used in the UK. Tradanet (an
implementation of the EDI Switch technology which is now wholly owned by
Geis), BT EDI Net (based on McDonnell (spelling?) technology), IBM IE,
AT&T EasyLink (which has a strong X400 flavour), and Geis EDI Express
(about which I know very little!).
Discussing costs is complicated by the fact that there are banding
arrangements; you buy a mailbox for an annual fee which includes a
certain amount of free traffic. Additional traffic is then charged at a
rate which depends on the band you bought into. The costing can be
complex; with charges based on kilo characters, number of envelopes, and
number of files. There may also be mailbox storage charges.
A further complication is added by the fact that you need not buy
directly from the VAN, but through a re-seller who will have made his
own deal with the VAN, and thus will have his own scale of mailbox
charges, banding, and traffic charges.
For a user who has about 1 Mb of traffic per month the VANs are roughly
similar, with a cost equivalent to about 15 cents per kilobyte. In view
of what I said earlier this is very much a ballpark figure.
If you are a higher volume user, say about 3 Mb/month traffic, then IBM
IE tends to win out with an effective cost of about 5 cents per
kilobyte. If you are a very low volume user (less than 50 kb/month) then
BT EDI Net costs about 30 cents per kilobyte. For the same volume IBM IE
would cost about eight times as much! A very high volume user would
negotiate his own deal with the VAN.
If cost were the only consideration then BT EDI Net wins out for the
small user, and IBM IE tends to be the best bet for the rest. If
functionality is an issue then my estimation (based on writing network
interfaces) is that IBM IE is the most complex and BT EDI Net the
simplest. Unfortunately I have never been able to decide if rich
functionality is a good or a bad thing!
In the UK choice of VAN tends to be made on the basis of the branch you
are in, rather than cost considerations. Tradanet is very strong in
Retail, for example. The exception is probably BT EDI Net, which has a
cross-branch appeal for the very small user because of its low cost for
this group.
Please bear in mind that all the above is grossly over-simplified, and
is my personal opinion. If XYZ VAN responds to show that they are
cheapest / best then I will gratefully steer clients to them.
Regards
Chris
--
Chris Johnson tel: +44 (0)20 8 501 1490 (home)
EDIMatrix Ltd +44 (0)20 8 559 2454 (work)
+44 (0)20 8 559 2497 (fax)
http://www.edimatrix.demon.co.uk
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