LANSA affirms leadership with EDI-INT AS2 certification

With companies such as Wal-Mart requiring AS2 compliance for all its more than 10 000 suppliers by the end of October 2003, AS2 is fast becoming the standard by which retailers will send secured transactions over the Web directly to suppliers and distributors.

AS2 is a security standard defined by the Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that allows EDIFACT-, X12- and XML-based business transactions to move securely over the Internet. The standard underlines the critical elements of data privacy, data authentication, non-repudiation of origin and receipt required to ensure the integrity of data communications via the Internet. The business benefits of AS2 interoperability include boosting efficiency and lowering the cost for transmitting critical business data.

eBusinessReady certification ensures vertical and horizontal interoperability across the supply chain and distribution channels. Without interoperability, a solution can strongly inhibit supply chain implementations and add significant costs associated with supporting numerous solutions and proprietary protocols.

TCM marketing executive Jorge de Campos said part of TCM`s mission is to help customers enhance their business performance through the effective use of leading-edge technologies, services and solutions. In line with this, LANSA AS2 Direct has been successfully eBusinessReady certified. "The certification follows completed testing for the Electronic Data Interchange for the Internet (EDI-INT) Applicability Standard 2 (AS2)," he said.

Operated by the Uniform Code Council, (UCC) and Drummond Group, (DGI) eBusinessReady is neutral in assisting companies in product selection and cost savings.

The program aims to drive the adoption of open industry standards by working with software vendors, vertical industry groups and the standards community to facilitate software compliance and interoperability.

LANSA AS2 Direct excelled in the rigorous AS2 certification process that tested transport-level interoperability with encryption, digital signatures and digital receipts.

"Providing our customers with significant added value was clearly a goal of LANSA as we entered into the EDI-INT AS2 testing process. Obtaining AS2 certification demonstrates LANSA`s continued dedication to provide superior e-business solutions, and furthers our commitment to enable customers to extend their supply chains securely, rapidly and cost-effectively over the Internet," said de Campos.

LANSA`s AS2 Direct solution provides an easy-to-implement native iSeries and Windows solution that installs on your production server and integrates directly with your existing EDI Translator product. LANSA can also perform the EDI mapping, if requested, as well as the direct integration to your line-of-business applications.

For typically implementations where there is an existing EDI Translator in place, AS2 Direct sits on top of that infrastructure and feeds that Translator the unencrypted document. Consequently, it picks up outbound documents, encrypts those based on your trading partner profile and sends them via AS2.

LANSA`s AS2 Direct solution takes the uncertainty out of retailer`s requests for AS2 compliance. Managing the process is made easy via Trading Partner profiles and AS2 Templates. The same LANSA technology is also used to provide UCCnet compliance for secured transport of XML documents.