Partners in the EuroEDI and Concorde consortia – set up with the purpose of interconnecting disparate Electronic Data Interchange systems – have successfully demonstrated the results of their projects. The projects are partially funded by the European Community’s Trade EDI Systems, TEDIS, programme, which is intended to encourage and promote increased EDI usage within the European Economic Area, covering the European Free Trade Association countries as well as the European Community. The two groups completed parallel benchmark implementations, demonstrating two different operational methods for interconnecting suppliers of local, regional and industry sector-specific Electronic Data Interchange services in various European countries. The EuroEDI project was co-ordinated by the Level-7 consultancy, and included the installation of a central EDI relay server developed by Infonet Services Corp on the EDI system provided by the Belgium Rapid Access Information Network Services, BRAINS, organisation, the Brussels-based Alcatel Bell-Belgacom joint venture. The system is now claimed to enable local Electronic Data Interchange service providers to interconnect with the server, using a single link. Spain’s Telefonica Sistemas SA and Ireland’s PostGEM Ltd are also members of EuroEDI. The Concorde group comprises Spain’s AECOC and Telefonica Sistemas, as well as France’s Gencod SA and Compagnie des Machines Bull SA. As part of the project, AECOC and Gencod established a direct point-to-point link between their respective AECOM X400-based service, and the Allegro value added network service, which uses the Odette file transfer protocol. The interface was created by Bull and Telefonica Sistemas. In addition to the existing members of Concorde, the group says that seven retailers and suppliers are examining further opportunities to exploit the new service. The demonstration took place in Brussels, with user communities taking turns to exchange EDIFACT messages; each time a message was received, an end-to-end acknowledgement was transmitted across multiple systems to the original sender. This acknowledgement was in turn translated into a final form reflecting Odette or X400 standards of the user’s own community. A similar demonstration is scheduled for the CeBIT trade fair in Hannover later on this month.
