Esteemed Colleagues:

The commerce communications sector is a rapidly shifting and dynamic market.Addressing these changes and opportunities is on the Business Development TaskGroup's VAN Summit agenda. Meetings will feature topics related to openness,agility, and innovation. Lessons learned from the previous VAN Summit meeting inPortland, OR (January, 2009):

· Fragmentation of commerce networks, walling off trading partneridentities, and avoiding standardized methods of interoperability and openness hasnot benefited the industry. Competitor collaboration in communications andequipment standards have enhanced other markets including telecommunications,Internet and Web Commerce providers.

* There is tremendous potential for the high-margin growth of value addedservices and penetration into the mid-market, if issues of complexity andinterconnections can be standardized and simplified.

* Features, governance, and a will to invest a newly formed technicalleadership with the "freedom to innovate", will benefit the entire ASC X12community.

The upcoming VAN Summit's agenda is to enable the VAN and the ASC X12 community toplay a greater role in SME and Mid-Market electronic commerce services, buildingupon previous meetings in several key areas:

1. Global trading partner directory - reduce market fragmentation and enhancethe end-user's experience

2. Optimized commerce provider inter-network communications based on accepted,proven global communications standards and performance benchmarks worthy of theX12 overarching agenda.

3. Enhanced management of the partner peering process, based on the vision of aglobal platform that all VANs and hosted commerce providers can take part in andbuild on.

4. Improvement of business processes, the management of long running work flowsin the partner setup processes.

5. The creation of an agile, trusted engineering task force charged withtransforming membership consensus into actionable items.

6. The open publication and sharing of technical standards and methods with theX12 community and allied partner organizations.

As you may know, X12 compatible EDI services, firmly established in thecommercial/industrial supply chain markets, have not enjoyed the same level ofmid-market adoption. Astute analysts mark the recent entry of Web 2.0 commerceproviders, who are rapidly creating new, “lightweight” standards for inter-partnertrade, as leading the trend towards rapid development and adoption of electroniccommerce services.

Partnering opportunities exist for EDI providers to enter this emerging sector of'lightweight" commerce. Many such members are already initiating strategies withinthe sector.

It is vitally important that the X12 community be aware of these emerging B2Bmarkets, their adoption of standardized directories, and their potentialprovisioning of lightweight service architectures. To this end, there will be akeynote address sponsored by Loren Data Corp examining the emerging dynamic oflightweight commerce services provided by new entrants in the Web Commerce

 

industry, and how this impacts the services offered by VANs and VAN servicesresellers.

Esteemed colleagues, ignoring the pulse of the industry will not serve ourcommunity. Engaging in a focused study resulting in collective, constructive, andenergetic actions will result in manifold opportunities. Therefore, the committeeChairs and volunteer organizers invite you to join the VAN summit on September 22in Los Angeles for what is to be the ASC X12 organization’s most dynamic andfruitful period of substantive developments in the B2B communications industry.

For registration details and more information, please visit us at:http://www.x12.org/x12org/meetings/x12trimt/index.cfm#VAN

Most sincerely,

 

Robert FoxBusiness Development Task Group Chair