B2B Data Integration and Transformation Blog

As software resellers and implementation service providers, Remedi is typically involved with the migration or new implementation of a comprehensive integration suite from the beginning of a project.  As we go through months of software demos discussing features and functionality, an important part of the project sometimes gets overlooked.  Infrastructure.  There are many important decisions that need to be made regarding infrastructure that will directly impact costs, resources, and timing of a project.   

Earlier in the week one of our consultant Blog authors addressed the issue of Integration and EDI Disaster Recovery Plans (DRPs) and testing those plans in a simulated outage...Necessary Evils: EDI Disaster Recovery. 

The article struck a cord with many and prompted some discussion among our followers and here internally.  The discussion topics resulting from the Blog included... 

It’s that time of the year once again where people start thinking about their taxes. Not a pleasant activity but a necessary one. This brings to mind an annual event that my client undertakes but in my opinion is like doing your taxes, not a whole lot of fun. I’m talking about the annual disaster recovery test (DRT).

For those of you that have ever been part of a DRT you know what I mean! It’s a process that may seem like a waste of time if it never gets used but well worth the time if you do need to execute it.

From a Bigger Picture Perspective.........

Do you ever wonder why you have all these updates on your computer when you boot up in the morning?  How about when you first buy a computer you have to spend hours to catch up on all the upgrades?  I remember when I started my career in IT back in 1997, Microsoft’s stock price was over $100 per share and then the bottom dropped out.  Microsoft had a great product but people only had to buy it once so they didn’t have a consistent revenue stream.  Then when the new release came out a couple of years later no one needed to buy it because the original version still worked fine.  I could see the marketing department at Microsoft sitting at conference table and pontificating on how they would get people to buy new versions of their products.  Then they announced that they were no longer going to support older versions and that forced companies to have to upgrade to newer versions.

Recently, Blog authors from Remedi have outlined the value of upgrading software to supported versions and some of the risks in not doing so...see the Blog from earlier this month Supporting Systems and Staying Current.  In addition to staying current and associated benefits, the article outlined version support for B2B Software from the likes of Cleo/EXTOL, TIE, and IBM.

One new and related announcement that occurred this week in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category was from IBM concerning Sterling Connect:Enterprise.