Executive Summary

Hyper-converged storage architectures from Microsoft reached maturity in 2019, becoming a CIO’s best bet for initiating high availability services built upon direct-attached commodity storage devices that are managed directly by the OS (i.e. S2D).

Creating server architectures with multicore CPUs, large amounts of  RAM, and a mix of locally attached storage (NVME (PCI bus) Disks (SAS),IDE, FC)  reflects a (not totally) new category of server architecture, known as “Converged’ or “HyperConverged”. S2D is the MS’ designation for a software defined storage architecture that manages direct attached commodity storage devices via a unified  OS management console (Windows Admin Center), which Microsoft trumpets at every opportunity on Technet video, seemingly deservedly so.

The Reality Check

S2D has, in 2020, overcome the market’s adoption hurdles. One facet of general acceptance is MS joining the rest of the storage OEM market. leaving RAID (mostly)behind and moving the management of mass storage into the OS. This trend started before Sun and ZFS, and subsequently grew into an industry. The enthusiasm for S2D is further borne out by the hardcore MS critics and analysts giving positiave voice to S2D, and finally, name-brand VARS and OEM vendors such as DellEMC and HP are offering off-the-rack S2D server nodes. These solutions are conspicuous in the Windows hardware catalogue, and that  is an endorsement.

The licensing conundrum

Microsoft’s licensing intent is less than crystal clear in the case of S2D – which most catalogs state as “Data Center” licenses only; other articles and forum responses from authorized representatives and VARS state that, “S2D may be used in any standalone Windows standard server without Data Center Licensing.” So this is a matter for continuing research.

The confusion is typical. “Storage Spaces” is for standalone control of local storage (starting in Server 2012) , Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) may span multiple nodes, even spanning WAN based and cloud nodes, starting with Server 2016 Datacenter license only.

This causes a great deal of frustration for IT professionals. Fortunately converged storage solutions have been around prior to S2D, even as MS partners. One MS partner has been offering HCI since 2015 and before, even some free VSAN solutions, and now  off the shelf using either Dell or Supermicro hardware.

Competitive Alternatives 

While quotes slowly trickle in from the vendors (Dell, HP) , let’s talk about Starwind, a local MA company. Starwind was chosen as a storage vendor at Loren Data Corp in 2015, when I participated in specifying mirrored server hardware, working alongside the President, Todd Gould, a Database expert. Starwind was mentioned in several Technet blogs and articles, early on during the maturity cycle of Storage Spaces and most pointedly, S2D.

Starwind started as a featured microsoft partner, and feature for feature, it seems to lead Microsoft’s offerings by a year or so. These mentions by Technet and the feature parity to S2D, could possibly mean a technology sharing partnership that lasted at least until 2019.

Articles by Starwind technical marketing (Anton Kolomyeytsev) are really worth reading for a proper understanding of converged servers.

The bottom line from reading the most recent Starwind and Microsoft articles, is that RDMA and SMB 3.1 are the enabling technologies that make converged storage using S2D or the Starwind VSAN practical, cost effective, and easy to use.

It has been a long time since a high-payoff technology has shown up that performs in a demonstrable fashion, as the live videos of S2D installs, most no more than 15-20 minutes, show how much polish MS has invested since 2012 in storage Spaces and Storage Spaces Direct.  

What does all of this get us?

Familiar server components are converging  or being moved out of the server tier. In the present  case, hyper converged compute / storage leads to elimination or reduction of RAID  or external SANs. Microsoft’s success in S2D shows in the very widely reported ease of creating and managing virtual machine instances, clusters of storage composed of direct attached  SSD, SAS, IDE. 

By eliminating the RAID and SAN enclosure abstraction layer (the black boxes), S2D lowers storage hardware costs while reducing management headaches – by presenting a unified interface, rather than proprietary software layers. Eliminating Storage Tier Complexity reduces drive rebuild and cluster recovery times, which increases availability.

Is it a good thing?

Storage Spaces Direct brings this all together within High Availability, failure tolerant infrastructure which encompasses Disaster Recovery,  if desired. 

The resulting IT Press coverage of S2D has been enthusiastic , especially in the 2019 server incarnation. Analysts have stated that  S2D may be Microsoft’s most important contribution to server-based computing in the post-cloud computing era. 

Is this good?
If the idea of Converged server architecture is appealing to any IT management, then a decision will need to be made on server licenses – Data Center is not an inexpensive license, although it offers a tremendous amount of Hyper V flexibility. Combined with S2D, it’s a killer package – unlimited VMs, converged storage with fault tolerance and freedom from RAID with all that means. 

Further Reading

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/failover-clustering/storage-spaces-direct-using-windows-server-2016-virtual-machines/ba-p/372018

https://www.petri.com/what-is-microsoft-storage-spaces-direct

https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2017/09/differences-storage-spaces-storage-spaces-direct/

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/4243a4ee-52a9-48a5-898f-6359a8c814f9/storage-spaces-vs-storage-spaces-direct

A very recent hands-on article from the System Center Team is very worthwhile reading:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/4243a4ee-52a9-48a5-898f-6359a8c814f9/storage-spaces-vs-storage-spaces-direct

Cost, licensing, details

‘If you cant say something in poetry, you don’t really understand it well’..

Once upon a time there was an API created by a brilliant man, the thought leader in his B2B technical sector, and the very last of the great men in E-commerce communications. This peerless Engineer created a powerful network management API – not just some hodgepodge of functions, but a coherent DSL-like function suite that really hung together as grand yet practical architecture. This API could really be put to good and profitable use by the visionaries and practically minded alike.

But, when I came along to help market it, I fell into the same pitfall as the Great man who created it….I fell into words and blah blah. Even some of the people who might have used the API said, “why do I need a 90 function API when I can use FTP to move files?” And I knew the answer in words, there were many compelling reasons why. How could I break the ice in the market that was used to doing things sub-optimally, and show them a better future? Then it hit me: ‘If you cant say something in poetry, you don’t really understand it well’. So I composed this rap song and had it animated. Now, The API really sold itself, all I really did was catalyze the market, and of course worked with the Great Man (Todd Gould of Loren Data Corp) on other promotions and business stuff. 

Now the API, ECGridOS, is servicing over 1,000,000 functions per day, which for a supply chain API (EDI network management), is amazing.

What is the lesson? You tell me. I think that much product marketing and language is dense, sounds indistinguishable from one product to another, and is simply unmemorable. This little ditty (at start of the campaign), along with hundreds of blog posts (ECGridOS.com) acted together to bring the Great Man’s vision to market.

Once upon an API…….or how I stopped the buzzwords and got the buzz going.

Once upon a time there was an API created by a brilliant man, the thought leader in his B2B technical sector, and the very last of the great men in E-commerce communications. This peerless Engineer created a powerful network management API – not just some hodgepodge of functions, but a coherent DSL-like function suite that really hung together as grand yet practical architecture. This API could really be put to good and profitable use by the visionaries and practically minded alike.

But, when I came along to help market it, I fell into the same pitfall as the Great man who created it….I fell into words and blah blah. Even some of the people who might have used the API said, “why do I need a 90 function API when I can use FTP to move files?” And I knew the answer in words, there were many compelling reasons why. How could I break the ice in the market that was used to doing things sub-optimally, and show them a better future? Then it hit me: ‘If you cant say something in poetry, you don’t really understand it well’. So I composed this rap song and had it animated. Now, The API really sold itself, all I really did was catalyze the market, and of course worked with the Great Man (Todd Gould of Loren Data Corp) on other promotions and business stuff.

Now the API, ECGridOS, is servicing over 1,000,000 functions per day, which for a supply chain API (EDI network management), is amazing.

What is the lesson? You tell me. I think that much product marketing and language is dense, sounds indistinguishable from one product to another, and is simply unmemorable. This little ditty (at start of the campaign), along with hundreds of blog posts (ECGridOS.com) acted together to bring the Great Man’s vision to market.

As a freelance analyst/ evangelist I assist thought-leading SMB /SMEs gain visibility in the B2B tools and services sector. From undiscovered to well-covered – that’s what I can do for your business, products, and services. 

Amplifying  industry recognition of otherwise competitive SME / SMBs, I create media to initiate discussions that not only highlight your organization’s character and thought leadership, but also position that special something within the current context of the desired target sector. This includes competitive research to provide a better understanding of  competitive forces a client is aligned with and against. This also includes researching the pricing environment and any ancillary issues affecting your solutions. Powerful and cost effective, my campaigns deliver answers and the actions for targeting an industry’s issues by highlighting your company’s unique strengths.

Yes, it is true that the feature and benefit matrix is all important, however, the market is crowded, so  my campaigns seeks to elevates  character, unique organizational strengths, and the elusive attributes which set the ground work for establishing trust- at least compared to monotonic product-centric language. We know true Character  when we experience it – yet conveying these attributes via media is a subtle skill. Each company possesses these unique imprints and and an essence that speaks to the  issues faced by your prospects, especially in technical / vertical markets.

I can do this for your business – promote core attributes to build industry awareness.

My shortest integrated campaigns start at 90 days. I have very satisfied references. I might consider full time positions.

Call or email me at abmadw@gmail.com 617-650-1024

Many portfolio samples are available here on LinkedIn, or my blog abmw.wordpress.com

Here’s a quick checklist of the backbone of my campaigns.

1. Conduct complete, sector in depth competitive review of client’s product coverage by function  / targeted client size, and any indications of leading or lagging within this sector. I identify the close competitors, including those with unearned recognition that your prospects might call in first. Being well informed regarding competitors and pricing is important to acting in a technical market.  The report will suggest avenues of making better, faster inroads into prospects compared to the default competition. 
2. I initiate trade relations, including analyst coverage, industry trade publishers, and directories that cater to the B2B tools and services sector. 
3. Write articles, papers, and create other media that expands beyond product / services feature and benefits. Feature and benefits are important, and I’m glad to collaborate with marketing folks, however, my campaign entails comprehensive publishing on a schedule schedule. The campaign covers your Company’s character, strengths, positioning, and the attributes that are often difficult to name – yet all companies have their essence which speaks to real issues and specific problems plaguing all contemporary technical vertical markets. I will promote your core attributes to build industry awareness. 
4. I belong to a confidential analyst’s network, with members from investment banks, analysts and other bureaus. We conduct a weekly call on topics relating to Enterprise computing, of which supply chain takes up 25-33% of the allotted call time. This information gained can help my clients when opportunities arise in the market. 
5. I advise on  sales automation and market intel generation using G-analytics and other relevant data mining tools. 
6. I am well versed in the use of Social media NLP mining systems, both no cost and paid subscription systems. These reporting tools can measure how and when targeted parties mention your company, and whether these mentions are positive or negative. 
7. I cross post to industry blogs and other sites, with relevant customizations, also to linkedin pages and the relevant B2B forums.
   

I have references and a good reputation as a contractor. My direct number is 617-650-1024

Portfolio references

Blog: abmw.wordpress.com

scribd.com/alanw

I wrote and published most of the API Developer Site : ECGridOS.com

France Telecom 2006-07-08

https://www.scribd.com/document/907440/Master-Analyst-EDI-vs-XML-White-Paper

https://www.scribd.com/document/2063324/Master-Analyst-s-Report-Telecom-Carrier-Opportunities-Automotive-Supply-Chain-EDI-XML

https://www.scribd.com/book/907473/Master-Analyst-s-Report-of-Consumer-Generated-Media-Metrics
Loren Data Corp 2009-2015

Narrative Summation Article

The following document was recognized as a key piece of corporate communications writing that was circulated to the OpenText BOD -, along with various personal outreach letters, convinced the board and CEO to work with Loren Data as a peer network.

https://www.scribd.com/document/205324603/Fulcrum

Letter / report to the FCC enforcement bureau (and EU UK regulators) that alerted the regulators that something was wrong.

https://www.scribd.com/document/62623186/Judicial-Briefing-on-EDI-InterVAN-Policy

https://abmw.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/state-of-networked-messaging-2016-q1-late/

https://abmw.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/constancy-of-vision-the-rarest-quality-in-corporate-leadership/

https://abmw.wordpress.com/2016/04/06/state-of-networked-messaging-2016-q1-late/

https://abmw.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/early-abstract-examining-the-recent-history-of-qualifying-investment-worthy-target-ventures-in-the-b2b-it-subsector/

https://abmw.wordpress.com/2013/11/22/my-evaluation-of-the-current-status-of-loren-data-corp/#more-1365

Basic SOW – Duration 6-9 Months

1. Competitive Compilation of adjacent services / pricing
2. Trade and Analyst Relations
3. Trade publishing of Long and short form articles
4. Social Media cohort analysis (if required)
5. Surveys and Prospect / user sampling
6. Media Generation for product evangelism and branding
7. Creation of trade show materials or webinar content

Executive Summary

Job Titles confer not only professional status, but they set expectations among the broad cohort of team members in a product driven organization. The title, “Product Manager”, a professional construct of the  later 20th century, must be one of the most amorphous titles in the modern workplace. How is this so? There has never been more  discussion regarding the definition of the title nor greater assumptions as to what the title entails; we witness this via the sheer number of websites, books, and training materials that have exploded on the scene, especially since the Internet era became pubescent.

Almost every technology driven organization places some emphasis on the Product Management sub org; we have seen the title occupied by engineers, sales persons, and those recruited from within development groups. We now see that specialist Product Managers hang their professional hats on the titular meme. Is it possible that Product go to market can be practiced as a profession without also being well-versed in the product’s particular specialty sector?

This brief will take a quick look at the issues, hopefully stimulating a conversation in your organization leading to further research.

Roles

Professions which define and oversee the  development and delivery to market have been called out as variations of Product Manager, Product Marketing Manager, or other soft-defined titles. Technology driven product companies are the most uniform in assigning a titular Product Manager to own the development milestones and set positioning. The most functional definition for Product Manager states:

“the position should be understood as bidirectional coordinator of the market’s expectations to the dev org, and as first communicator of the marketing org’s best intentions to the target market  – (of what the product will be upon delivery)”.

The Author concurs regarding the above statement.  

The Role of the Product Marketing Manager lies without the boundaries of product managers. This is confusing for the professionals serving within organizations that are multifaceted with deep / broad lines.

Titles are thrown around interchangeably, and nothing more cavalierly than Product Manager, but a marketing manager’s role is tied to specific products and the results  cannot be avoided.  PMs and PMMs are different and they perform different roles.  

A Google search of the variations of these titles proves nothing, except that there is amazing disagreement about what Product Managers are responsible for. 

Product Manager

Product Managers are a bidirectional asset combining analysis and intimate knowledge of the niche;  the complexities of interpreting markets and addressing competitive voids is fraught with subtleties.  The means to surface opportunities from customer problems (via surveys and just being there) is an acquired skill, as is the ability to unambiguously define features and lead the development org with the proper guideposts and roadmaps.

Above the pay grade

Forecasting a Product’s ROI is not the Product Manager’s responsibility, as the C-Suite should conduct due diligence before a product definition is signed. This does not excuse Product Managers for willful blindness or failure to communicate for what might be, for example, the obviously shifting sands of a fickle consumer market.

Product Managers within SME scale entities are often tasked with participating in distribution and pricing, whereas industrial, manufacturing, and Enterprise IT segregate the Product org from such functions.

Titles are Titles, but The Product Manager’s Daily Grind Endures

The art of positioning against competition and market conventions (see Moore’s Chasm diatribes) is mastered over one’s career lifetime. Creating market share projections on the back of an envelope are the veteran Product manager’s stock in trade, similar to the reality checks that are life and death for the CPO and CMO.

Managing the product life cycles for long-lived carrier class hardware and capital equipment is the pinnacle of the Product Manager’s art  – though many professionals heeled in technology based consumer products prefer the yearly rollout schedules.

Keeping one’s engineer and development org positioned as thought leaders and managing analyst relations often round out the extremely busy Product manager’s duties. This is often In addition to being the sole owner / manager of the product roadmap. Crossing boundaries within the org makes for an unfocused workday, to be both outwardly and inwardly focused. Some would have it no other way, while others will not last the week.  

For those with a more technical orientation, Technical Product Managers are architecture and feature Road-map focused.

Product Marketing Managers

A complex and varied role as well, the Product Marketing Manager has shared headaches and pains known only to those interfacing with full-time marketing org. The size of the organization will dictate the stratification of the marketing roles, but Product marketing managers are more closely bound to the Product Manager.

Product Marketing Managers take the Product to market with the internal assistance of the product manager, and get ready to hand off to sales.


Titles, Actions, Results.  

One thing we might agree on when debating the non-specialist Product Manager role vs. organically grown from the development org Product managers, is that good ones know how to write, deliver, and present, and maintain clear Requirements Documents. These all important documents are written by those who understand the market, but all who call themselves by the title can learn a thing or two.

Market Requirements are problem statements of the present market. A product manager who spends time traveling and working with client colleagues gathering data and requirements will grow in knowledge that adds invaluably to the development and marketing org.

Good Product managers are hard to find, sometimes the C-Suite is just content to find merely unobtrusive Product managers who can contribute and lighten the load. But acting as a true harbinger of the market, part analyst, part prognosticator, and trusted agent to the most valuable thought leaders in the client community, is worth pure Gold.

Hey, no problem. Here it is. All mine:

One of the in line comments at the tail of the LinkedIn article was sincerely yet unintentionally funny, and I found myself unable to resist piggybacking on the typo made by the commenter – especially since I am not happy about the Microsoft buyout of LinkedIn….well, you know after what they did to so many other companies such as Skype (ruined), Nokia (buried), Sidekick (hey you forgot that little leading edge mobile device company that led the market by 5 years, and that MS absolutely destroyed with its management’s wrecking ball style)?

Here an innocent Kenyan comments to Reid: Original at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/entrepreneurship-fundamental-human-attribute-we-need-more-hoffman

What mama never told you

The Universal Complaint, if one was nominated in the EDI messaging sector, must be regarding Service Plan accounting, or what I call, “invoicing opacity”; it occurs when one attempts to reconcile a VAN bill with what you thought was your service plan / tier / stated rates. How did these extras get slipped in? They charge for interconnect traffic? and so on.

Things get particularly fraught when dealing with the madness with corporations selling VAN services via several aliases.  These corporations are amalgams of several businesses bought, sold, and reconstituted under a PE umbrella. With no founders or engineers left from the founding teams, these run down shells are denuded of essential institutional memory. We can instantly see why invoicing opacity has been routinely adopted by the PE managers and their C-Suite robot warriors at VAN HQ, or what’s left of it.

This  brief monograph lays an easy goal for the author – answering why most VAN invoicing is so opaque, especially as practiced by companies that should know better. These remnants of the declining VAN era should also be called upon to do better for the industry – laying bare an obvious question: “where is the VAN sector going”? And, “where will VAN clients go to once they are sufficiently fed up by the Value Subtracted Network model of the 201X EDI era?”

However, for the moment limiting ourselves to the advanced math of VAN invoice accounting, let’s at least throw down the primary reasons for confusion. After we accept that the situation is far from ideal, then the revolution may commence.

The Opacity Factors

The following factors have been contributing to VAN invoice opacity for as long as anyone can recall:

• KC / KB differential
  
  a KC is 1000 characters, a Kilobyte is 1024 bytes. People get caught on this all the time.
  
  
• Rounding –
  
  The devil his grande self once told the author (in a personal interview) that there is a special place in hell for VAN executives that allow rounding up of the KC Count.
  

• Interconnect traffic treated as a special class of messages.
  
  In intensive beer and Q&A sessions amongst the VAN insiders, this particular question has never had a satisfactory answer. First of all, in the post Internet era, data is carried over interconnects via IP, and the costs are negligible as far as interconnect traffic is concerned.
  
  In the second logical instance – whoa! What is there besides interconnect traffic? Yes, there is the native data traffic, but then what are we saying – that offsets are placed on interconnect traffic to what effect? To influence customers to bully their vendors onto the home VAN?

• Support fees that are not clearly delineated as such
  
  The maturation of the EDI end-user population has transformed the sector. Where it all began, once upon a time, as a user population biased towards the very large Enterprise, has now truly become a far more complex mix.
  
  This maturation curve gave birth to the service providers led by SPS commerce, and the Technology forward VANs (Loren Data Corp) that grew with these service providers, allowing the market to diversify….amid some bad acts and actors.
  
  Now, some end-users are also quasi service providers in their own right, providing services to their vendor population that would have been considered unheard of 15 years ago.
  
  Therefore the support mix being offered has been growing in diversity with the sector’s maturity. The downside in billing opacity has been an emerging tendency to bury some support items in the data billing. Not cool.
  
  If you catch this in your VAN invoice, and then discover the fine print, it is time to start planning your migration to more honest providers.
  

Would the above potential distortions and exploitations pass muster in other connected markets – in telecom, internet,GMDSS?

No.

Hell no.

All VAN traffic is now Internet traffic. So…..you do the math (!). If the math for your VAN invoice requires trigonometry, start looking for a new EDI Network.

The opinions expressed are the author’s own.

bizQuirk (Wilensky et al)

Abstract

Transactional Messaging, particularly in the B2B / Supply Chain domain, has been undergoing a series of protracted upheavals for the last decade, some would say longer. VANs, once the stalwarts of messaging sector, find themselves at the end of a long wind down, despite a hectic period of consolidation at the hands of professional PE.

The service once known as EDI messaging (at one time owned by VANs – period full stop), until recently, purchased as ala carte services, is being increasingly mutated into embedded functions within Enterprise Software and B2B platform services (SAAS).

And so on; change being the reliable constant in all things relating to vendor community management in the retail and manufacturing supply networks.

This article is condensed from the larger body of supply chain systems analysis compiled by the authors over the course of 2015, with an eye to calling the dance for 2016 – so far, the data has tracked accurately.

Supply chain systems affordability, availability, acquire ability, and the SME’s entry costs to participate in a retailer’s or manufacturer’s supplier cohort are in constant flux, even as we enter Q2 of 2016. There is, for sure, good news to report. For the bad news, piles of advice from numerous questionable sources are easy to find.

Trends locked in – Winners Consolidate Gains, Losers take a long slide to Perdition,

SAP Alternatives continue to multiply

The story behind the democratization of the SME ERP space, whether server or SAAS, breaks down into SAP Alternatives and the specialty markets. The ALT SAP reformation is functionally married to the opportunity to embed EDI Comms functions into the ERP Stack.

With a relatively few methods to reliably add EDI network management and comms functions to a server container or application stack; the market can turn to one, and only one, API provider, as there are only a handful of SDK, and still fewer native language extensions for .NET and the non-Microsoft crowd. More on this subject later.

Demise of the once mighty Value Added Network

With no absolute need to name and shame, ask anyone in the sector to speak the plain truth – the surviving VANs are experiencing lowered customer satisfaction rankings and declining revenue across the board.  The billions in private equity that entered the US and EU VAN sectors have not resulted in better service nor an invigorated and diverse competitive market, Thought leadership and innovation are empty words in the VAN sector, with rare though marked exceptions embodied as iconoclastic torch-bearers notable for their endurance and outspokenness.

Stewardship via industry participation is simply absent among the most highly financed VAN leaders. It seems the best that any of the top two or three VANs come up with is marketing under multiple brand aliases and beating the same tired hype that sounds like a throwback to 1999; not a point of pride at all.  

Service Providers: ever cautious – the leader takes action

The study of SPS Commerce is instructive; the company has been through any number of growth phases, also having survived the VAN wars by pure chance. The Company made a bold move (starting in 2015) with the purchase of the York Worldwide VAN to move its messaging infrastructure in-house. The ballsy part of the decision was to part ways, amicably for sure, with their VAN immemorial, ECGrid, with the bottom line of forfeiting the highly differentiated ECGrid technology, but more pointedly, foregoing the support regime refined by Loren Data Corp specifically for SPS.

More than a few B2B Sector Analysts are keeping their eyes on how SPS will manage operations without the master level support supplied by Loren Data’s ECGrid® Netops staff for the last 16 years. We shall see.

The state of EDI Tools and middleware

Mapping has been the downfall of the vendor community. The design-time task of field and data type conversion and element reordering ‘outside of database’ has been THE bane of the EDI tools market..unless you are a tools vendor.

“Mapping tools are for the EDI guys and gals we don’t trust with DB access….”, said a fellow analyst at the OAG 2009 breakout session in Redwood City, “the non-EDI data transformation world has tools for machine driven reordering of data elements between dissimilar systems of record”.

Those with experience in data transformation for systems outside of the supply chain (non X12  / EDIFACT) have adopted canonicalization. Auto glass and mobile locksmiths and other aftermarket verticals have a growing number of tools available to keep the delta (change) logic within each document. OAG has been at the forefront of “logic in the BOD”.

Adherence to an industry canon with segment options as microformats have been proven to streamline run-time translations, and are better solutions than ad-hoc-per-hub element type conversion and field reordering.

The Fruits of Consolidation

The VAN industry persists in its disunity and abandonment of the merest pretense towards advancing a core messaging services stack, that is, state of the art transactional messaging services.  

Though the VAN’s cling to the Value Added Network moniker, what B2B services buyers want from a classic VAN is:

1. Communications across the global mesh of EDI networks
2. Mailbox management (document object storage)
3. Seamless interconnection with as wide a vendor community as possible without forcing vendors to locate on a Hub’s home VAN.
4. Rich, graphic user interfaces for configurable access to as wide a panoply of communications options without undue complexity.
5. Transparent setup of communications options between VAN addresses and AS2  configurations.

Summary

The EDI network messaging sector is entering 2016 with a whimper, not a bang. The services being offered from the largest, best financed EDI leaders have remained static, yet the stale policies leading to deteriorating support are dynamic in all the wrong ways, i.e., opaque invoicing, to name one embarrassingly sticky attribute.  

On the upside, we have iconoclastic high-integrity leaders that are visible and conspicuous for their outspoken thought leadership – one does not have to hire a B2B sector analyst to find these Scientist / Engineer Founders, the EDI market leaders who have built a legacy of integrity, openness, and personal support and service.

They are the heroes of the EDI Sector examined in the next installment.