Virtual Logistics' EDI and XML Data Integration Blog

On Monday April 16th in Atlanta, Liaison CEO Bob Renner awarded Virtual Logistics Inc. Liaison's North American Partner of the year award for 2011. In presenting the award to Scott A. Beaver and Robin H. Smith, Bob indicated that "Virtual Logistics was selected for this honor because of their dedication to their clients and partners, their ability to articulate complicated matters in clear ways, their use of new socialization approaches to educate all of us, and their thought leadership through difficult and historic times". 

I am amazed in our sales cycle by the number people I speak to who have selected an EDI Service provider and found out after the fact that they have been slotted into a one size fits all solution. I don’t know too many businesses that are identical even in the same vertical. The way businesses are run is as diverse as the people who work in these organizations.

I have read, over the past weeks, a number of articles predicting that the VAN (Value Added Network), commonly used for EDI trading partner communications is dying a slow death. The latest article I read postulated that in the next year VAN traffic charges would be nil. Zero, no charge! Not sure I agree with that, but it is definitely a race to the bottom. In medical terms death can be slow or it can be quick. In the case of the VAN it is a tortuously slow death.

Middleware buy vs build. Today we released the second episode of Integration TV's 2012 season. The feature interview this episode is with Hollis Tibbetts, of Artemis Ventures, in Austin, Texas, a leading integration expert who discusses the pros and cons of buy vs build. Hollis like most experts in the field believe there is greater value on the buy side of the arguement. 

The other day I was cleaning out a pile of old magazines and came across the October 2004 issue of Wired with the article by Chris Anderson called The Long Tail. Chris published a book in 2006 on the subject, which was followed by a TED talk in 2007, where he takes a concept from statistics to describe the long tail in business. He proposed that in some cases the bulk of a company’s business comes from a long tail approach – low turn over items. Apple iTunes is often given as an example of long tail at its best. ITunes has thousands of songs and generates the bulk of its revenue from one-off sales. Amazon is another example.

You + a data integration strategy = success. Yes, it's that simple. Understanding the data coming in and out of your organization so that you can make the right long-term technology and process decisions is a must for every company.

Is your company living in organizational silos? Is the concept of a data integration strategy completely new (and slightly intimidating) to you? If so, this is a webinar not to be missed! Robin H. Smith from Virtual Logistics will join us to discuss:

Integration TV, today launched its first episode of 2012. Feature interview in this episode is with Michael Stevens of Integrated Fulfillment and Eric Brown of Fulfilltopia discussing the issues around web store, e-commerce and fulfillment house integration. Anyone with a webstore who is looking at fulfillment houses should watch this interview.

The majority of companies that have purchased Liaison's ECS Server software do traditional EDI, a few also use the software for moving data within their organizations, and a few also use the software for web services.

Over the years much has been written about the potential cost savings of implementing EDI. Many business have been forced into doing EDI by trading partners in order to retain business and many as a result have taken the easy route and opted for a web based solution.  Why? The web portal solution is cheap, it is easy to become compliant and doesn’t require a buy in from the internal IT people as the solution requires no infrastructure purchase or software setup. Usually a web browser is all that is required. 

Are you drowning in data ?