SaaS- and cloud-based EDI’s core benefits are fairly well known: reduced capital investments and operating costs, simplified IT, and the ability to streamline and improve information exchange among partners. But there’s more to be had.

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No doubt, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is well entrenched in the hearts and minds of IT and business pros. It has been around, in various forms and mechanisms, for decades (in fact, according to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) overseeing EDI’s standards, the first recorded EDI dates back to the 1850s when the railroads and Western Union used the telegraph to communicate business information).  So change is somewhat slower than other, newer information technologies.
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Value-Added Networks (VANs) have been around for more than 30 years. But as Scott Lewis, senior product marketing manager at IBM’s Sterling Commerce puts it, “today’s VAN is definitely not your father’s VAN.” VANs have evolved from simply being a managed network on which to exchange EDI information and documents between a company and its trading partners to a more robust service that includes not only the network but also a variety of services aimed at facilitating more effective commerce amongst numerous organizations.

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