Walter, What Earl and Bob say makes sense.
Not too long ago I was paying 10k per month for VAN charges, and was using dial-up. I looked at several alternatives because I was getting lots of errors with my EDI package and my VAN. I couldn't pinpoint where the problem was because neither vendor gave a rats behind about me and my problem. My trading partners cared a bundle and the penalties they charged reflected that. Eventually I stumbled on Softshare ECS, along with their translator Delta. When they quoted me their internet-enabled VAN price, I calculated I could purchase the entire package and recover the cost in less than three months, including training for me and another mapper by replacing my old van with theirs. I was right. Softshare also offers packages suited to companies who need to trade fewer transactions, and those who are not integrated into their back-end system. ECS includes AS2 at no extra charge. This is a phenomenal savings. They also offer the best customer support of any IT company I have worked with. Bar none. <sales pitch> I am a consultant, and would be happy to work with you to chart a course to get you to the 21st century. I have been there, it is beautiful </sales pitch> Good luck, Art Douglas Chief Consultant Blackwater Network 877-464-8915 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Earl Wertheimer Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 9:51 PM To: w_cohen99; [email protected] Subject: Re: [EDI-L] Reducing/eliminating our EDI VAN Walter > We are a mid-size company and use EDI through Easylink (VAN). We > have 75 trading partners of which some of them are EDI brokers and > some of them themselves use other VANs and we pay about $1k per > month for our low-volume communications costs (~3600kc). We [still] > use a dial-up modem while connecting to Easylink. We have a few clients on Easylink, and they all use the Internet to connect. Easylink supplies 'AccessPlus' which can be easily setup to use your existing high-speed connection. If you think that you are paying too much, then shop around. There are many VANs around, and you may be able to switch or renegotiate a lower rate. > We want to get into the 21st century and get away from using the > modem so we are looking at other options (internet/web-based, ftp, > http, AS1, AS2, etc). Replacing the modem should be easy. Replacing the VAN may be a bit harder... > Ideally we'd like to try and eliminate the VAN communication costs > from the picture. What we've done so far is look at other VANs that > allow us to get off the modem and go through an internet protocol > (via web browser) for communicating. > > My question is how do I go about researching other alternatives such > as using AS2? DO I need to poll all of my trading partners to see > if they can handle AS2? If some can handle AS2 and some can't then > what are my options? How can we [slowly] get off of teh EDI VAN? If you are the supplier, you will probably have to follow your customer. There _is_ a trend to AS2, but it is moving slowly. WalMart converted, SearsCanada is doing it now... There are many others. It _is_ more complicated to maintain a direct AS2 or ftp connection, but you do save the VAN charges. If you are the customer, then you may have more leverage. AS2 is still pretty new and not many companies maintain ftp servers for EDI. In some instances, Bay/Zellers (in Canada) did AS2 with their high volume partners. You should be able to have multiple communications methods at the same time. One of our clients does AS2 (WalMart), some proprietary protocol (Afaria), Easylink AND Web Page file transfers... One of their TPs is pushing AS3. Earl Wertheimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.spe-edi.com ... 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 ... 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: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[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/
