Y'all can get Softshare ECS for $6500 plus 20% annual maintenance. It includes AS1, AS2, AS3, FTP, SMTP, POP3, file system, etc., for the purchase price. There is no incremental charge for additional trading partners.
AS2 may not be inexpensive if you insist on purchasing the big names, but if you want something that simply works, this is one way to do it without breaking the bank. Art Douglas Chief Consultant Blackwater Network 877-464-8915 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of w_cohen99 Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 12:12 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [EDI-L] Re: Reducing/eliminating our EDI VAN Well, we are a grocery wholesaler and, as such, are customers of the trading partners (vendors). We have been operating for over 10 years using Easylink and have always connected to our trading partners via the VAN. None of our trading partners have ever said to us we must go to AS2 (like Walmart did). We are looking to cut down on monthly/yearly costs and if AS2 might allow us to do that then I need to do further investigation. It might turn out that AS2 is not going to save us any money, whether short or long term. I am currently attempting to poll our top 5 trading partners (EDI volume) to see if they are EDI-capable and are willing to communicate directly with us via AS2. I will be writing up an ROI analysis on this and if it is determined that our top 5 trading partners can do AS2 and they combined cut out 80% of our VAN traffic then this would be an achievable investment for us. I've only checked with one other company who happens to also be a VAN about their AS2 software. Inovis has a package called BizConnect which costs $5000 for the first 5 tp's, plus an additional $4,800 for licensing, plus 20% of that for maintenance ($900). So, up-front costs are seemingly high and would obviously make our ROI of a longer duration. I was thinking, and perhaps incorrectly so, that if we could find and buy some encryption software we could then do the AS2 communications ourselves and not need the AS2-based solutions that the VANs (and others) seem to want to push. This would effectively get rid of the 80% EDI transactions going through our VAN now. We would most likely never eliminate the VAN completely but in the long run the costs should be lower over time. I realize the responsibilities would lie on our company as we would then be acting like a VAN as far as audiing and errors, etc. However, I'm still thinking that even if our top 5 vendors/trading partners can do AS2 then only 20% EDI volume would go through the VAN and make this a cost-effective alternative for us. It may take several months to realize those savings but the decision is not up to me - I only write up my findings. Any thoughts on this as well as specific software I might research? Thanks again! Walter --- In [email protected], "Carl Galgano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > A lot of this depends on if you are trading with customers or vendors. If > you are the customer, then obviously you have quite a bit of leverage. > Sometimes change can be painful. > > AS2 is a good solution, but not the "free on the internet" solution you may > be looking for. AS2 for 75 partners will get expensive for the software as > well as the implementation. Obviously the type of data (ie banking or > HIPAA) might mandate you go with some sort of secure communication protocol. > > We have a customer who also was using easylink via a dial up BSC connection. > They had about 60 proprietary EDI partners (internal app) and 15 real EDI > partners. We ended up building them an FTP server that only served to > communicate with partners and ditched the easylink VAN all together. If was > a much cheaper solution that supporting AS2, and frankly, this customer did > not need the security of AS2. > > It has been a very cost effective solution, and we maintain it for the > customer at a fraction of these VAN charges they were spending. > > cjg > > > Carl J. Galgano > EDI Consulting Services, Inc. > 770-422-2995 > www.ediconsulting.com > > 600 Kennesaw Avenue > Suite 400 > Marietta, GA 30060 > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > w_cohen99 > Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 10:00 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [EDI-L] Reducing/eliminating our EDI VAN > > 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 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). > > 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? > > Thaks for any assistance. > Walter > ... 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 ... 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