Denny Boynton and Eliot Muir are probably reading far too much into the
article that Les Zalewski shared with us: "J.B. Hunt's EDI Swap-Out."
Internet Week and the rest of the trade press are known to take the most
prosaic items and blow them all out of proportion. It would be
uncharitable to call the guys who write this crap liars, and way too
charitable to call them "reporters."
I read this stuff only to see how far the shameless chattering nabobs at
Internet Week and InfoWorld will go. The National Enquirer and other
tabloids are more believable: three-headed babies as a result of cloning
experiments gone awry are more likely than a quick ROI payback on
switching to "XML-based trading networks."
My suspicion is that J.B. Hunt has merely installed good old Internet
EDI (EDIINT) to avoid or mitigate VAN charges. Their existing trading
partners who are capable of AS1 or AS2 EDIINT may now themselves avoid
the VAN, and exchange EDI point-to-point with J.B. Hunt. Others, who
don't want the hassle of manual trading partner and key management, can
probably continue using their VAN to trade with J.B. Hunt as if nothing
happened: any competent VAN can use Internet EDI to store and forward
EDI to and from J.B. Hunt on behalf of their customers.
William J. Kammerer
Rachel Foerster & Associates, Ltd.
Columbus, US-OH
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