Ben, As others have indicated, in a growing number of cases you really don't have a choice whether to go with AS2 or sFTP. And ultimately you may need to look at implementing both protocols/technology since I'm aware of at least 1 LARGE dot com that uses sFTP for the transmission but that would depend on if your company is doing business with them.
However, as one or more of the posters has indicated, sFTP is very much the exception than the norm. Your network admin's concerns may be valid to him, but look at the bigger picture. If (most of) your top 100 (or even 1,000 retailers for that matter) are using AS2 and their volume is probably 1,000's of time higher than what your company is doing and they don't have any issues, your admin's concern start to seem a bit vague or uninformed. Also there is the issue with sFTP of storage and response time for batching items vs. AS2 being real-time (and no I'm not talking about the archiving side here). The Walmart's and other large retailers have thoroughly investigated/researched AND tested this technology before implementing it and have built their business model around real-time data exchange COMBINED with security. They can't afford to be impacted by any security issues. In addition, most of the VAN's prefer to use AS2 for pretty much the same reasons as the large retailers. But ultimately it comes down to this - you WILL have to implement AS2 for some specific trading partners because your TP wants you to, if you want to exchange EDI with them and in some of the cases, if you want to do business with them, you have to setup EDI, regardless of what one or two of your network admin's think or feel. You can choose to implement sFTP only if you have a specific TP that won't use AS2. Ken edispec ________________________________ From: Ben Kenoyer <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2012 5:44 PM Subject: [EDI-L] AS2 versus S/FTP I am working on an internal proposal and am looking for some feedback from my peers who are on either side of this topic. I am working on an EDI software migration, and I selected the software we went with (Liaison ECS/Delta) for several reasons. One of the reasons I chose it (and one of the points I made in getting it approved) is that I can potentially save money by performing more direct-connections with a few of my higher-volume trading partners and avoid the VAN costs of data transmissions. My old software was limited to simple FTP connections. My new software is capable of just about any communication protocol that can be used by EDI. I have been speaking with one of my Network Administrators about getting our systems set up for AS2 (of which he and most of my Operations team have never heard). Since this protocol is a "push" behavior, they are very against it--even if going through a designated web server in our DMZ--from a security perspective. I can still accomplish some of my promised cost savings if I perform some direct-connections to higher-volume trading partners via S/FTP instead of AS2, but that could require at least one of us to host the FTP server and possibly allow the other to "push" documents to us. This seems much more doable if both partners can simply "pull" documents at their own leisure and keep the new processes within the scope of my current security policies. I have been trying to find a good business reason why AS2 is better than S/FTP. Basically, is it worth me trying to get my company to adjust their policies and possibly hardware, and invest their time to establish an environment that is compatible with AS2 in order to save me money, or are there any reasons I can't use my existing FTP abilities to accomplish this? I understand that EDIINT recommends AS2 for EDI traffic, but I haven't seen a discussion against S/FTP as it pertains to EDI. My current FTP connection to my VAN uses encryption in both directions, so the transmissions are secure and ensured. I have been told that while an MDN confirms receipt of a transmitted file, an X12 997 (Functional Acknowledgement) is still necessary to communicate that the transmitted file was functionally correct and not just simply received. So, using the "immediate acknowledgement of transmission success via MDN on AS2" argument is MOOT. Thoughts? Feedback? [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ ... Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Job postings are welcome, but for job postings or requests for work: <JOBS> IS REQUIRED in the subject line as a prefix.Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
