Johannesburg, 17 Sep 2001
The development of effective message hubs will be essential for the realisation of the promise of end-to-end supply chain management - the ultimate goal of B2B e-commerce.
So says Greg Vercellotti, SA sales and marketing manager, Dimension Data i-Commerce, who explains that message hubs "translate" data from disparate systems into a common language, delivering the most effective method for collaboration and acceleration of a business` entrance into full e-commerce.
"While much of the hype surrounding e-commerce has died down with the dot-com demise, e-commerce is not dead. A significant amount of B2B e-commerce is taking place at present. However, much of it is `invisible` because it`s restricted to informal point-to-point collaboration between two business partners.
"The promise of B2B is that this collaboration can be extended to multiple business partners, and from these partners to their partners across the entire supply chain. The vision is for a constant flow of intelligent information and reliable movement of transactions in and out of internal business applications and networks of each supply chain player. These changes can take place over public or private wide area networks or across e-marketplaces," he adds.
However, the fact that business partners often utilise different back-end system platforms which cannot communicate with each other is delaying the realisation of this vision. A SAP system, for example, can`t `understand` information generated from within a Baan back-end.
According to Vercellotti, it`s this hurdle that next-generation message hubs are designed to address.
"A good analogy for these message hubs is the Saswitch protocol used by SA banks to enable a request for a transaction performed on bank A`s ATM to be verified and authorised by bank B`s back-end systems.
"B2B message hubs will provide seamless protocol and data format translation between back-end standards ranging from EDI, XML, EDIFACT and legacy formats, producing compatibility between disparate systems, applications and trading partner business processes.
"This protocol translation will allow for all integrations from the simple to the most complex, ensuring secure and guaranteed exchange of transactions and information with trading partners over any network.
"It won`t matter whether the interaction is point-to-point integration, or through a public or private e-marketplace populated by any number of participants. Businesses won`t even be aware that the `translation` is taking place - it will happen totally transparently," Vercellotti concludes.
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