While each of the major public cloud providers will support EDI/B2B integration infrastructure, anyone considering migrating to the cloud needs to compare them for costs, scalability, compliance, connectivity, and analytics tools.
Key Takeaways:
Understanding Your EDI and B2B Infrastructure Needs
Key Features to Look for in a Cloud Provider for EDI/B2B
Evaluating Cloud Service Cost Structures and Pricing Models
Ensuring Compatibility with Your EDI/B2B Systems in the Cloud
Comparing Major Cloud Providers for EDI/B2B Hosting
Understanding Your EDI and B2B Infrastructure Needs
The first thing you’ll need to wrap your head around is documenting your infrastructure needs. To keep it manageable, we suggest you divide this part into two chunks and then break them into smaller steps.
First, evaluate the complexity of your EDI requirements:
- Step 1: List the number of trading partners, their communications method, SLAs, and other partner-specific requirements.
- Step 2: Note the transaction/KC volume your business handles.
- Step 3: Identify the EDI document types you regularly exchange such as the 810 (Invoice), 850 (Purchase Order), or 856 (Advance Ship Notice).
- Step 4: Consider the integration needs between your cloud-hosted EDI system and your existing ERP, WMS, or CRM systems which may remain on premise or may also be in the public cloud.
You can use this documentation template we developed to help gather all the information you’ll need.
Next, identify your compliance and security needs:
- Step 1: Determine if your industry has specific compliance requirements such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, or GDPR.
- Step 2: Determine if the cloud provider(s) you’re considering can meet these standards.
- Step 3: Assess the need for end-to-end encryption, data residency, and secure data transfers to trading partners.
Key Features to Look for in a Cloud Provider for EDI/B2B Integration
Understanding the details and implications of each provider’s offerings can be overwhelming, even more so when you try to compare providers. Understanding the following criteria can help you draw a clear picture of where each vendor’s services differ, and overlap.
Scalability: EDI/B2B operations often see fluctuating transaction volumes. So you want to ensure the cloud provider can scale up or down quickly to handle peak periods (e.g., retail transactions during holidays) without compromising performance.
High Availability and Uptime Guarantees: EDI workloads are mission-critical, meaning downtime can disrupt operations. Look for providers that offer 99.9%, 99.99% uptime guarantees, or the “five 9s” (99.999%)” if your business needs virtually zero downtime. Note that uptime guarantees can vary by service within each provider’s offering.
Also, be sure the provider has geographically distributed data centers to support disaster recovery and minimize downtime risk due to regional outages.
Data Integration and API Capabilities: For EDI systems to work seamlessly, your cloud provider must offer robust integration tools (APIs, adapters) to connect with trading partners and back-office prem/cloud systems.
For example, they must be able to support industry-standard protocols (AS2, SFTP, API/REST) and EDI communication methods.
Data Security and Compliance: It sounds basic, but you need to verify the provider offers real-time monitoring and security features like role-based access control (RBAC), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and encryption (in-transit and at-rest). You also need to confirm if these features are baked into the monthly cost or considered add-ons.
Also, be sure they offer tools to help you maintain compliance with regulatory frameworks and if you’re comfortable they will help you stay on top of your compliance requirements.
Lastly, users who already host applications in the cloud are familiar with their provider’s offerings and may, out of vendor loyalty or the sake of convenience and simplicity, prefer their current cloud provider host their EDI workflows.
Evaluating Cloud Service Cost Structures and Pricing Models
If ever there was a use case to apply the caveat emptor principle, it’s cloud services. However, controlling costs is doable and comes down to these three tenets.
Understanding Cloud Cost Models: First, compare pricing models, meaning pay-as-you-go vs. reserved instances or spot pricing options. Next, assess potential hidden costs (e.g., data transfer fees, storage costs, backup, and recovery services).
Negotiating Opportunities Based on Volume: Look for cloud providers that offer transparent pricing specifically tailored to data-heavy integration workloads. If you anticipate high volume workload processing or data exchange, you should definitely push for discounts, custom SLAs with enhanced uptime guarantees, or a longer-term contract in exchange for lower pricing to offset the risk of cost escalation (see below).
Long-Term Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): Calculate the upfront and annual long-term costs of cloud migration, including licensing, storage, bandwidth, and managed service fees. Consider any cost escalation risks as your processing power needs and data/transaction volumes grow.
Ensuring Compatibility with Your EDI/B2B Systems in the Cloud
When we talk about EDI/B2B integration compatibility, we’re talking about software and system compatibility and integration capabilities compatibility.
Legacy System Compatibility: If you're migrating from on-premises EDI systems first ensure your current tool can run in the cloud and is supported by that vendor on the cloud provider you are considering. Next, verify the cloud provider can easily support your legacy applications and facilitate smooth migration to the cloud.
You’ll also want to identify the applications that can’t migrate and plan to replace or work around them.
For example, we’re often asked by users of Sterling IBM Gentran if they can migrate Gentran to the cloud. However, Gentran is not supported by IBM in the cloud.
While Gentran offers reliable data translation and communication capabilities, its architecture reflects an era of on-premises, server-based setups. As such, it’s less adaptable to modern, cloud-friendly environments.
For these customers, we usually recommend they consider IBM Sterling B2B Integrator (full disclosure, Remedi is an IBM Gold Partner) for two reasons. First, Sterling Integrator offers robust cloud compatibility. Second, they can re-use trading partner maps and avoid the expense of re-mapping from scratch.
Comparing Major Cloud Providers for EDI/B2B Hosting
Much as they may seem at first like commoditized offerings, when it comes to public cloud services, it can be tricky to do an apples-to-apples comparison. The big three vendors like to keep their pricing opaque and try to compete on differentiating their services.
That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to compare them. Here’s an overview of each vendor along with their pros and cons.
AWS
AWS deserves credit for creating a service that offers genuine value along with the scalability and global reach that has made them the market leader in cloud computing. Reasons for their dominance include robust integration tools (AWS Lambda, Amazon API Gateway) and support for various communication protocols (AS2, SFTP).
Pros:
- Advanced security features
- Extensive API support
- Large ecosystem
Cons:
- Complex pricing structure
- Hidden costs like data transfer fees
Microsoft Azure
Azure continues to gain share with a reputation for being strong in compliance, especially for industries like healthcare and finance (e.g., HIPAA, PCI DSS). They also offer deep integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and other ERP systems.
Pros:
- Easy integration with Microsoft tools
- High level of security
Cons:
- Pricing complexity, particularly when the organization needs to scale up
Google Cloud
With a delayed focus on the enterprise market, Google is considered a latecomer to the cloud services game. That said, they’re known for analytics and AI-powered services, which may be beneficial for processing EDI data more intelligently. And Google Cloud supports EDI integrations with strong API management tools.
Pros:
- Innovative machine learning
- Analytics capabilities
Cons:
- Smaller ecosystem of B2B users
Conclusion: Finding the Best Fit for Your EDI/B2B Needs
At one level, choosing the right cloud provider to host your EDI/B2B infrastructure is about finding a balance between cost, performance, security, and integration capabilities.
What makes the decision challenging—as well as exciting—is that you’re not just choosing a provider that aligns with your current needs. A successful EDI migration means playing the long game and choosing the best provider for your future needs as well.
To do that, you’ll want to consider providers that:
- Offer automation tools that will help streamline EDI processes, such as automating error and alert handling or monitor your infrastructure and alert you to problems or tuning opportunities.
- Plan to provide AI and machine learning capabilities that can help your organization optimize their B2B transactions by analyzing patterns and improving efficiency.
- Have a roadmap for future growth and development, including support for new technologies like IoT, or advanced data analytics that could amplify supply chain visibility and enhance your EDI-enabled decision-making.
Next week’s blog—our last in the series— distills more than a decade of migrating on-premises EDI to the cloud into a series of do’s and don’ts you won’t want to miss. And remember, you don’t have to go it alone.
As veterans of dozens of on-premises to cloud EDI infrastructure moves, we can help you devise a thoughtful plan to minimize impact to the business and trading partners.
Reach out here if you’d like to discuss your options for migrating your on-premises EDI infrastructure to the cloud.
Other Articles in This Series:
Should I Migrate My On-Premises EDI Infrastructure to the Cloud?
What Are My Options for Migrating My EDI to the Cloud?
What is the Best Way to Migrate My On-Premises EDI/B2B Infrastructure to the Cloud?
