"Steve X Lee doesn't question the "big blue sky." He (or somebody he
knows) was "actually involved" (presumably in the installation of IPNet
Solutions' product or services at J.B. Hunt). So he's clearly "in the
know." The rest of us are left scratching our heads after reading
Richard Karpinski's article in Internet Week."
vs.
"Shannon,
This is good. Instead of people talking about this case and questioning the
big blue sky, we actually had somebody involved. Do you have any feedback to
the comments supplied so far?
Regards,
-Steve"
Misunderstanding here. What I'm saying is that with Shannon on the scene she
is in the know, we myself included the EDI-list aren't. I was soliciting a
response from the architects. How many times have we wondered 'Why did they
do that... hmm...' This was a chance to get a response.
So are we saying if the article was titled 'Switching from VAN to Secure
Internet' it would be a more accurate description?
Regards,
-Steve
-------------------------------------
Dear Steve:
I only know what I saw in the article. But just in case there's more to
the story, as you seem to imply, I took a look at IPNet Solutions' press
release. Vendors never lose a chance to issue a puff piece - and this
is usually the primary source researched by the lazy press. Often the
incestuous relationship between the press and vendor marketing
departments is a case of the blind leading the blind, and the original
puff piece is seldom more enlightening. In this case, I was pleasantly
surprised: IPNet Solutions actually told the truth, or at least
something that is marginally plausible:
"Based on open standards, eBizness Transact will allow
J.B. Hunt's suppliers to communicate and transact
business via any standard browser or transport protocol
including VAN, Internet, FTP, SMTP, HTTP and HTTP/S.
IPNet's e-business solution will make it possible for
J.B. Hunt to quickly and seamlessly exchange data with
its entire supplier base, while supporting AS1/AS2
security standards."
See http://www.ipnetsolutions.com/news/pressreleases/073101a.php. I saw
no blather about dumping EDI in IPNet Solutions' press release, so I
imagine that's just something Karpinski pulled out of his ass when he
said "J.B. Hunt will move away from EDI formats... toward open data
formats, like XML"
I do see the buzzwords "AS1" and "AS2" in the vendor press release,
confirming what I initially guessed at: J.B. Hunt is now EDIINT enabled.
Throw in the "VAN, Internet, FTP, SMTP, HTTP and HTTP/S" and it sounds
like what every other capable Internet EDI package provides. Internet
Week says "[the] deployment... will cost [J.B. Hunt] about $200,000,"
which I assume is principally made up of the cost of the IPNet
Solutions package; this is somewhat in line with the cost of equivalent
solutions, further confirming we're dealing with an EDIINT communication
package. Expensive and labor-intensive as these packages are, it does
seem reasonable that you can obtain a fifteen-month ROI payback "through
elimination of costly VAN fees."
William J. Kammerer
Rachel Foerster & Associates, Ltd.
Columbus, US-OH
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