A rchive Date
[ 12-08-2000 ]
Category
[ Information Technologies ]
sub-Categoy
[ Computers ]
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[Getting to XML
The new B2B lingua franca will need to live with EDI. Here's how to mix the two
By Anne Chen, eWEEK
August 7, 2000 12:00 AM ET
Rob Fusillo is caught in the middle. The CIO at scientific products e-marketplace SciQuest.com Inc. would love to embrace XML as the exclusive technology to be used by buyers and sellers exchanging information on his business-to-business e-commerce site. Doing so—and eliminating expensive EDI-based transactions and the VANs they require—would, he estimates, cut transaction costs by 50 percent.
"SciQuest desires the cost savings from moving significant transactions onto the Internet using XML [Extensible Markup Language]," said Fusillo, in Morrisville, N.C.
But here's the rub: Fusillo can't mandate XML because, among the 1,000 business buyers and sellers that use SciQuest.com, 15 percent of the information exchanged comes to or from large corporations that transfer data to the e-marketplace using the electronic data interchange format. And they aren't about to drop EDI, no matter how much Fusillo may want them to. So he has to support both EDI and XML as well as nonautomated data transfer methods, such as fax and e-mail.
For some very good reasons, XML has quickly gained a reputation as the lingua franca of B2B e-commerce. Based on Internet protocols such as HTTP, XML is much easier and less expensive to deploy on the Web than EDI, making it a natural for smaller businesses without the IS staffs or money to deploy EDI. In fact, by next year, 70 percent of all B2B transactions executed on the Web will be done using XML, Gartner Group Inc. predicts. The bulk of those transactions will involve small and midsize enterprises that today do not use EDI.
But, as Fusillo and other B2B e-commerce pioneers are finding out, for all its advantages, XML won't completely replace EDI any time soon. For one thing, too many large enterprises have invested too much in EDI to walk away from it now. In addition, XML, for all its promise, is not mature. Standard tags and DTDs (Document Type Definitions) for defining the industry-specific data elements needed to execute specific transactions, in many cases, still have not been hammered out (see related story). Until they are, experts say, XML won't replace EDI.
So companies racing to B2B e-commerce, including SciQuest, Deutsche Financial Services Corp., Seals GmbH and many others, are looking for ways to maximize use of XML while enabling the new standard to coexist with EDI. The best way to do that, experts say, is to identify B2B business processes that have not yet been moved online but that may be best-suited for pure XML implementations and, for those, begin investing in technologies that process XML-defined content. At the same time, many companies are deploying general-purpose integration servers and a new generation of EDI-to-XML translation server that can be used to integrate EDI- and XML-based applications. In the long run, experts predict, such integration tools may extend the life of EDI by merging the technology more completely into the fabric of B2B e-commerce.
"Right now, it's not an either/or situation with EDI and XML," Gartner's Knox said. "XML will actually accelerate EDI's embrace of the Internet."
Making the translation
To help corporations weave existing EDI-based systems into B2B e-commerce environments, software developers such as Philadelphia-based Bluestone Software Inc.; Netfish Technologies Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif.; XMLSolutions Corp., of McLean, Va.; and Mercator Software Inc., in Wilton, Conn., have begun tailoring enterprise integration server platforms to fit the role of EDI-to-XML integrator.
At the same time, dedicated EDI-to-XML translation tools are beginning to emerge. One is XMLSolutions' XEDI Translator, a Java application that integrates with EDI trading systems by providing X12 and Electronic Data Interchange For Administration Commerce and Transport EDI translations to XML.
Savvy CIOs like Fusillo are relying on these integration tools to push forward with XML while protecting customers' investments in EDI. Fusillo chose to use XML as the middleware for integrating SciQuest's internal financial processing, shipping and catalog systems.
Mercator's Mercator Commerce Broker is used to map business partner documents—be they in EDI or XML—to SciQuest's internal systems. SciQuest is extremely interested in the creation and support of XML and other standards and encourages trading partners to participate in setting those standards.
To meld EDI into B2B, experts say, companies must be willing to put up with higher systems costs. While moving some B2B transactions to XML and the Internet, for example, Fusillo plans to continue to operate his existing VAN (value-added network) for some transactions. That's because, he said, he still sees tremendous value in VANs, particularly for transactions that require high levels of backup, recovery and security.
While experts say it may be wise to continue to invest in maintaining existing EDI applications and VANs, companies should consider limiting investment in EDI for new projects. There, they should focus on XML.
Deutsche Financial Services is doing exactly that. The St. Louis-based financial services company, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank AG, of Frankfurt, Germany, is evaluating XML for a project that will enable midvolume customers to receive invoices and commercial financing, said Tom Szabo, vice president of the company's Advanced Technology Center.
Deutsche Financial Services already has a substantial investment in EDI, which it uses to receive invoices from vendors and to communicate approvals. Much of the company's interaction among partners and customers is on EDI. Szabo said he does not expect to replace those EDI transactions with XML in the near future.
He added, however, that "some customers do not have the ability to make that investment in EDI but do [so] many transactions that data entry over the Web would be tedious. It's a gray area we'd like to serve better."
Currently, Szabo is examining Deutsche Financial Services' business processes to see which ones could work well with XML. He is also speaking with new clients and old business partners to gauge their interest in the language, purchasing software that supports XML, evaluating XML-based products, building prototypes and researching standard XML DTDs. Last year, in fact, Szabo settled on Bluestone Software's Sapphire/Web as his company's application server, in part because of its ability to handle XML.
Investing in technologies that support XML is just one strategy that companies are using to push forward with Web-based B2B transactions. Many are also joining industry organizations that are defining standard XML vocabularies for vertical markets. That way, companies can be sure that, when they're ready to roll out new XML-based B2B services, the standards exist to support them.
Frankfurt-based Seals, for example, has been working with the University of Frankfurt, an original developer of the XML language. Together, the university and Seals, which acts as a data intermediary between trading partners, has used its partnership with the university to define the role XML plays in the organization's B2B efforts. While 20 percent of Seals' clients receive invoices in EDI format, a growing number insist on receiving support over the Web, said Seals CEO Marcus Laube.
Seals, which was spun off from Lufthansa AG AirPlus last year, has set up its online service, InvoiceXchange, to deliver data to customers via either XML or EDI.
To handle both data formats, Seals uses Mercator's integration broker to handle transformation and routing. When customers send EDI documents to Seals, the broker translates them into XML, checking for errors in code, format and sequences. Companies such as Lufthansa AirPlus use InvoiceXchange to consolidate invoices from travel agents, hotels, car rental agencies and other suppliers for delivery over the Internet through Seals to corporate customers. Laube estimates that customers choosing to receive data from InvoiceXchange via XML see cost savings of up to 60 percent over those choosing EDI.
"EDI is a very valuable technology to provide for commercial automated transactions, but we appreciate the flexibility of XML," Laube said. "EDI was supposed to be a killer app, but XML actually is one."
Gartner's Knox agreed. "An XML-enabled solution is perfect for a company that doesn't have a large IT staff, doesn't have the computing resources, and can't afford EDI and VANs," she said. "XML levels the playing field because now even the little guys can play with the big boys."
So, given XML's many advantages in B2B e-commerce, how long will companies such as Seals, Deutsche Financial Services and SciQuest continue to support EDI? Let's put it this way: EDI probably has a longer life expectancy than many of the new e-commerce sites now popping up on the Web, experts say.
"My suggestion is to limit investments in EDI and explore ways to use XML. ... EDI will probably be around for the next 10 years, though," Knox said.
EDI vs. XML
August 7, 2000 4:22 PM ET
Large enterprises with investments in EDI can use translation engines to convert XML documents
EDI
Optimized for compressed messages
Requires dedicated EDI server costing $10,000 to $100,000
Uses value-added network
EDI message format can take months to master
Requires C++ programmers
Machine readable
XML
Optimized for easy display and programming
Requires Web server costing up to $5,000
Uses existing Internet connection
XML message format can be learned in hours
Requires JavaScript, Visual Basic, Python or Perl script writers
Human and machine readable
Source: Gartner Group]
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