Eight Approaches to B2B Application Integration
Whether Driven by Mandate or Mission, MSBs Will Automate B2B Interactions

If you’re a midsize supplier to large buyers, you may be affected by often-conflicting mandates for the automation of business-to-business (B2B) activities, such as purchase orders and advanced shipment notifications. But you have a modest IT staff, and have heard that value-added networks (VANs) and other service providers offer hosted solutions to help you connect to your trading partners.

Integration service providers (“new-age VANs”) provide outsourcing options for B2B application integration that complement a wide range of B2B software and options for do-it-yourself e-hub projects. Whether responding to buyer mandates or developing a B2B IT strategy to rationalize multiple B2B projects, you must understand common B2B problems, the various approaches for solving B2B integration, and how to choose between them.

B2B Approach #1: File Transfer.
When your requirements for point-to-point file transfer evolve from being tactical, siloed, limited deployments into strategic, multiapplication deployments, consider shifting from homegrown point-to-point file transfer to commercial managed file transfer applications.

Managed file transfer — which is mistakenly called FTP — continues to play a major role in internal and external application integration. Basic File Transfer Protocol (the real FTP) doesn’t provide a way to address file transfer management capabilities, so vendors have responded by developing and marketing applications that address the managed and secure file transfer needs of the market. Major vendors in this space include Sterling Commerce with its Connect line of products; Proginet with SIFT and CyberFusion; Tumbleweed with its Valicert line of products; Computer Associates, CommerceQuest, Ipswitch and others.

B2B Approach No. 2: E-Mail
Action Item: Trading partners that want to use e-mail as a primary method of conducting B2B commerce should take steps to filter and scrutinize e-mail attachments.

E-mail is still a popular, low-cost way to exchange documents with business partners. However, with the recent explosion of malicious viral attacks on e-mail infrastructures, companies have started limiting the type and size of e-mail attachments. Compressed files may contain malicious code — and so can common document types — for example, Word, Excel and PowerPoint can easily carry malicious macros that, when executed, can compromise the security of any company. Most integration service providers (for example, Mincom, Sterling Commerce) will convert and deliver business documents to e-mail accounts. Some service providers (for example, EasyLink’s Telex for international SWIFT) offer e-mail-based messaging systems that provide secure (encrypted), reliable (delivery notification and time-out), SMTP-based communications as a way to deliver business transactions and documents between trading partners.

B2B Approach No. 3: Browser/Web Forms
Action Item: Consider portals, Web forms and other browser-based applications for trading partners that have limited IT skills and low transaction volume. Consider outsourcing Web forms to managed service providers.

Portal technologies and content management systems (CMSs) provide ways for business partners to place orders online using Web forms, provision themselves, actively manage their profiles, and analyze and report on their historic interactions. Portals have moved past providing only Web forms and now offer customization, real-time integration and deeper interaction with the overall enterprise management systems for dashboard visibility. Full-featured Web forms implementations include pre-defined forms, personalization, data translation, validation and business rules, application-based “convenience” features and provisioning (so trading partners can register themselves).

B2B Approach No. 4: Fax-OCR
Fax-OCR is complex, error-prone and rarely worth a long-term commitment to an in-house IT project. Managed service providers with well-established tools and best practices to deal with high transaction volume are better suited to process Fax-OCR.

While Fax-OCR is useful as a “last resort” method for semi-automating business transactions, the technique is complex, error-prone and — particularly for tactical, low-to-moderate volume scenarios — rarely worth a long-term commitment to an in-house IT project, where missed or added characters from insufficiently thorough post-validations can produce million-dollar mistakes on purchase orders. Although no service provider can guarantee 100 percent accuracy, for most projects we recommend that you outsource this menial task and focus precious internal resources on more-strategic IT activities.

B2B Approach No. 5: Packaged Integration
When available, PIPs should be considered an alternative to custom integration, and as a way to accelerate B2B integration projects.

Packaged integration is simply a new type of application that integrates specific business processes between specific applications. A packaged integrating process (PIP) is one form of packaged integration that comes pre-configured to run with embedded integration middleware, and adapters to link specific applications. Ideally, packaged integration can be used as-is to integrate commonly used business processes and documents between application systems and, increasingly, between trading partners.

B2B Approach No. 6: Adapter Frameworks
B2B-enabled adapter frameworks can be a cost-effective, lightweight alternative for B2B than other forms of integration middleware that are more-expensive and -complex.

Adapter frameworks (from vendors such as Attunity, Insevo, iWay, Jacada and Librados) have traditionally been used only for internal integration. However, because adapter frameworks are useful for simple point-to-point integration, it’s natural that adapter framework vendors have added B2B to the mix. Like any other integration middleware, adapter frameworks are complex technology and, thus, require strong integration skills. On the other hand, adapter frameworks have a lower cost and a smaller presence than many other forms of integration middleware (for example, integration brokers), so they’re a viable option for integration projects with a limited scope — for example, linking one back-end application with your trading partner’s.

B2B Approach No. 7: PCs and Appliances
Consider appliances for smaller trading partners with limited-scope B2B deployment requirements, where low cost and zero administration enable fully automated B2B application integration

Appliances and pre-configured devices are emerging as a viable tactical solution for integrating smaller trading partners into supply chains where automation is highly desired, but there are insufficient IT skills or little desire to implement B2B software. Advantages include low cost as well as simplified installation and administration, because the appliances can be monitored and managed from a central location. A key disadvantage is that such appliances may be inflexible and inappropriate for changing IT infrastructure, because the packaged integration is, to some degree, “hard-wired.” Reprogrammable appliances partially address such limitations, but when flexibility is required, trading partners will likely need to “upgrade” to software. Some trading partners may be uncomfortable installing appliances in their IT centers if they don’t understand them or can’t control them. However, for tactical, limited-scope deployments, where fixed functionality is required (for example, the automated exchange of purchase orders and invoices), appliances can be a useful approach.

B2B Approach No. 8: B2B Software
Consider B2B software when there’s a requirement for flexible security, multiprotocol support and strong trading partner management, involving potentially dozens or hundreds of trading partners.

Different vendors have taken different approaches to offering B2B integration technology. Independent vendors are offering it as a stand-alone product, while integration suite vendors are offering it as add-ons and modules that extend the functionality of their products. B2B gateway purist vendors initially invested all of their resources in network and trading partner services. Also, in a point-to-point (source application to target application) scenario, these solutions are easily deployable, compared with other types of middleware. Support for a variety of integration suites and B2B software simplifies integration, and comprehensive, easy-to-use graphical user interfaces make provisioning and other trading partner services quick to execute.