My personal reaction to Todd's rant against all VANs is that it is a prime example of an over generalization of one VAN's business decision to not to do business with another VANs and the resultant impact to both VANs' customers. GEIS most certainly did not make this decision on a whim nor without considering the impact and fallout. But to now cast all VANs in that same mold is just plain wrong-headed.
Rachel Foerster Principal Rachel Foerster & Associates, Ltd. Professionals in EDI & Electronic Commerce 39432 North Avenue Beach Park, IL 60099 Phone: 847-872-8070 Fax: 847-872-6860 http://www.rfa-edi.com <http://www.rfa-edi.com> -----Original Message----- From: Todd Callen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2001 10:22 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [EDI-L] <SALES> IP Based Vans I would be very careful using EDIINT services from the VANs. EDIINT is an excellent standard for trading EDI data over the Internet and is most beneficial when used to trade directly with your EDI trading partners since it has the end to end tracking capabilities. The end to end confirmations become a waste in theory when going through a middleman. If you have the capability or means to do EDI-INT in-house, why pay a recurring monthly fee to a third party when you can pay ZERO costs to exchange data with your partners over the internet? BUT the strongest reason to avoid EDIINT services with the VANs right now is the fact that you can't trust them anymore. For example, last month GEIS decided it was no longer going to interconnect to ICC. For years GEIS had been supporting interconnecting into ICC and now that they are in a squabble with ICC they got pissed and pulled the plug leaving many businesses a short amount of time to figure out how they were going to get their EDI data to/from their existing trading partners. This left many companies scrambling to figure out how to connect to their ICC customers in a very short time period. After what has happened with this GEIS/ICC calamity, you can't trust the VANs to give you enough time to implement EDIINT connectivity either on your own or through another VAN. The reality is that the EDI VANs are much like long distance phone companies. There is very little difference between what they offer so they are offering you discounted rates from what you currently pay their competitor. If you let them do EDIINT connections to your trading partners you assume too much risk that they will pull the plug on you in an effort to get money from the company that was mandating EDIINT to save on their EDI VAN bills. You WILL HAVE A MAJOR PROBLEM on your hands when they do that. The reason is that implementing EDIINT connectivity has many time consuming problems to solve including firewall issues, email server issues, etc. By using an EDI-INT solution in-house you CONTROL your own flow and costs and can reduce or eliminate the ongoing fees of a third party VAN. Why do you think so many major retailers have implemented internet EDI initiatives with their suppliers (Lowe's, Linens N Things, House2Home, etc). We are one company that supports EDIINT software solutions for our customers, but there are others as well, and our perspective clearly differs from that of the VANs. Todd Callen Trailblazer Systems, Inc. (p)770-850-6966 (f)770-850-6974 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.AS400FTP.com ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Pinpoint the right security solution for your company- Learn how to add 128- bit encryption and to authenticate your web site with VeriSign's FREE guide! http://us.click.yahoo.com/yQix2C/33_CAA/yigFAA/OIFolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message Identifiers: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <PRODUCT> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
