Infogold, the information services company of Anglo American's Anglogold division has become the first South African certified site for GENTRAN Server, an electronic commerce messaging server, from Sterling Commerce and available locally from Persetel Supported Software.
As such, South Africa joins only three other countries outside of the U.S.A. - the United Kingdom, Singapore and Switzerland, to be among the first to install GENTRAN Server. GENTRAN provides formatted file translation, message management communications, process control and audit functions necessary to link business applications with customers and suppliers worldwide.
Gentran Server was specifically designed to take full advantage of the Windows NT environment. "Infogold is one of the largest EDI users in South Africa with over 500 partners trading electronically," said Nico Strydom, EDI Sales Executive at Persetel Supported Software. "As such the installation of GENTRAN Server is extremely important to us," he said. Being the first installation in South Africa, Sterling Commerce sent a representative to Infogold to certify the site.
"This is to ensure that the installed product meets our performance objectives and that its function in the particular business application is consistent with its design," said Steve Ulrich, Senior QA specialist - Product Certification for Sterling Commerce. "We also believe that our involvement at this point is important to affirm our ties with both the product and Supported Software," he continued.
Having obtained certification, Infogold will be used as a reference site in future GENTRAN Server sales in South Africa. Released in June last year, GENTRAN Server is the first product to bring full-scale, distributed EC messaging to the Windows NT environment.
According to Martin Venter, Manager of the EDI project at Infogold, the decision to purchase GENTRAN Server was taken on the strength of the company's plans to increase drastically the number of users of its EDI facilities. Currently operating at 20,000 transactions per month, Venter and his team aim to recruit more trading partners and to grow the transaction base to about 150,000 per month.
"By the year 2000, all business to business transactions between Infogold and its partners will be EDI-based," Venter said. "GENTRAN Server is a powerful, scalable, cost-effective and easy to implement electronic commerce solution," he added. GENTRAN Server links Web-based and EDI systems to disparate business applications with commercial-level message management and any-to-any formatted file translation.
It enables electronic communications with suppliers and customers through direct connections, value- added networks (VANs) or over the Internet. The product can be configured to meet the customer's specific electronic messaging needs and features a graphical user interface to provide a common look and feel for all components of the system.
A responsive messaging component allows customers to implement an unattended EC messaging server that responds to critical events, with message triggers and actions for fully customised 7 x 24 lights-out operation. The translation software component deploys a consistent architecture for GENTRAN customers to exchange information with multiple trading partners, regardless of their size.
Trading partners with limited message volumes can exchange messages via electronic forms from Windows and Windows 95 platforms. GENTRAN Server supports international proprietary, fixed format and public data translation standards.
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