Un/Edifact - The Future Of Edi And Edifact

By the 2000s, Internet-based e-commerce, particularly commerce between businesses, was slowly leading to the replacement of EDI in favor of eXtensible Markup Language (XML), which was poised to become the lingua franca of e-commerce. But while the new standard created a great deal of excitement, and analysts tended to position XML as the basis for future electronic exchange, EDIFACT was still a hot issue in the early 21st century.

Few analysts were willing to pronounce the imminent death of EDIFACT, much less EDI. In fact, the most commonly envisioned scenario involved a layering of XML with the EDI structure, most likely with EDIFACT playing a major role in systematizing the two broad technologies into a seamless and compatible whole. In 2000, for instance, the European Commission called for the design, development, and installation of a bridge between EDIFACT and XML in which communications may be transmitted, received, and read in both formats.

While the development of the Internet as a commercial vehicle prompted some to declare that EDI's days were numbered, EDI transactions were generally Internet friendly. Moreover, until the Internet proves capable of handling the more intensive business-oriented data transmissions for which EDI was created, many firms may feel more comfortable sticking with their EDI systems rather than investing in a full-scale conversion.

On the other hand, for most small and mediumsized businesses, EDI technology can be prohibitively expensive. To remedy this problem, in the late 1990s and early 2000s CEFACT was developing Simpl-EDI and Object-Oriented EDI to upgrade the EDIFACT standards to incorporate the developments in information technology and the sophistication of user interfaces through the 1990s. Simpl-EDI is a less information-heavy version of EDI, in which messages are simplified to their most essential elements. Since most EDI systems were designed for larger businesses with more convoluted dealings, they function to incorporate higher degrees of complexity than was required by the average smaller business. Simpl-EDI, involving less complexity, was thus designed to present smaller firms with a cost-effective opportunity to employ EDI.