Life in the Slow Lane
Not Dead Yet
Reports of EDI's demise exaggerated
Electronic data interchange (EDI), pronounced dead by many media outlets, can be heard tapping quietly on its morgue drawer.
Business has long used the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) EDI as a way to exchange data in a business context. XML is increasingly being talked up as the metadata standard that will dethrone ANSI EDI.
Members of the Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA) had another view of XML at the 2001 DISA E-Business and Internet Conference.
GE Information Services Inc. senior consultant and XML instructor Bill Cafiero said that XML can provide certain advantages over ANSI EDI for data interchange, but that the expense of replacing or changing intact systems is rarely justifiable and unlikely to occur soon. Interest in XML as an alternative to ANSI EDI will, Cafiero said, dissipate as people get entrenched in the reality of implementing XML data interchange systems with partners.
David Paraiso, director of the consulting firm Integrated Technologies Inc., said only 2 percent of students in his XML classes work on EDI applications.
Industry firebrand Andy Duncan, president and CEO of Advanced Data Exchange (ADX, formerly The EC Co.), claimed his revenue from EDI subscribers is growing 20-24 percent per annum, although subscribers increasingly choose the Internet instead of value-added networks as the transport medium. "EDI will continue to flourish.... XML won't surpass EDI for quite some time," Duncan said.
However, ANSI EDI users may not be able to set the pace of XML EDI adoption. Beth Topiol, a vice president at Citibank, said she has large customers pushing for Citibank to adopt XML.
And Joe Dalman, COO of TIE Commerce (an e-commerce consultancy involved with the ebXML initiative), said the main impetus for suppliers to participate in XML-based, supply-chain collaboration is pressure from large, influential customers.
The bottom line, according to Jeff Donnelly, president and CEO of BlackHog Inc. (a discrete manufacturing procurement platform), is that companies should use whatever technology satisfies requirements at a reasonable cost right now. "Don't invest in anything ... that will take three to four years for a return on investment," Donnelly said.
Jeanette Burriesci
