RE: EDI Recommendations -- MIDRANGE-L

Art:
Thanks for the plug.  I guess I should have seen this thread a little
sooner, but decided to not turn the PC on over the weekend.  (I just
watched football all day Sat and Sunday).

Anyway, yes we do run an outsourcing service, if anyone wants more info,
please contact me off line.

But to answer the original question about EDI translators on the
AS/400....
The big three are Inovis (Premenos/Harbinger/Peregrine), Sterling and
Extol.  We support all three and all three are decent products.  They
all have their strengths, and I do not think you will go wrong with any
of them.  I think that Patrick Townsend (www.patownsend.com) has a new
entry into the translator market.  I do not have any experience with his
product, but all my associations in the past with both Patrick and his
products in the past have been exceptional.  I have been concerned about
the stability of the Inovis product as it has changed hands so much.
Harbinger also pissed me off by requiring their customers to relicence
the product when they switched from V2 and V3 to version 5.  I know the
mapper is now GUI (VB/ODBC) based in the eV5 product, but in my mind it
is essentially the same product.  A lot of my clients felt the same way.
Extol, has the best support out there.  The "mailboxing" feature of the
Invois product is nice, it helps to subset the transactions your have
send/received.  This is especially helpful when you need to solve a
problem, or hunt down a document.

Mark, you asked about PC translators.  There are a zillion PC based
translators out there.  We have dealt with the big ones (Trusted Link,
Sterling, etc), but generally recommend a product from a smaller vendor
called QualEDI.  (pronounced quality).  These guys have been around for
a very long time (the 80s) and only do EDI.  Their PC product is
reasonably priced and support is very good.  It can operate in a stand
alone mode (received documents and print them, key documents into it and
send), or can act as a front end to another system.  We have implement
QualEDI as a front end to the AS/400 many times.

One other word about pricing.  All the AS/40 products are tier priced.
In many cases, if you have a big box, it is cheaper to buy a small AS400
(P05) to handle EDI.  The cost of the P05 tier AND the hardware is
generally MUCH cheaper than licensing a P40 or P50 tier box.  The
integration is very easy to accomplish.

cjg

Carl J. Galgano
EDI Consulting Services, Inc.
550 Kennesaw Avenue, Suite 800
Marietta, GA  30060
(770) 422-2995 - voice
(419) 730-8212 - fax
mailto:cgalgano@ediconsulting.com
http://www.ediconsulting.com
AS400 EDI, Networking, E-Commerce and Communications Consulting and
Implementation
http://www.icecreamovernight.com
Premium Ice Cream Brands shipped Overnight

"You ain't gonna learn what you don't want to know" - rw

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
[mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com] On Behalf Of Art Tostaine, Jr.
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 9:16 AM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: EDI Recommendations


We've used PC translators to pickup files from the 400 and EDI them.
It's usually not very stable.  When there is a problem, we have to have
someone on site to work with the PC.  I recommend this solution only if
absolutely necessary.

We have one customer using the Sterling product on the PC.  It's prone
to failure and tech support is horrible.

An alternate solutions could be Carl Galgano of EDI Consulting.  He's
just starting to offer a translation service for customers. Basically,
you pay him to map to your file, then you pay him per transaction.  It
can be very cost-effective, especially when you consider translator
costs, mapping, training, etc.

He's got a lot of EDI experts in his company, and a lot of computing
power, with redundancy, etc.  We're considering offering his EDI
services to some of our customers instead of purchasing expensive
Iseries translators.

Even if you don't use Carl's company, I would send him an email or call
him.  I'm sure he'd be willing to give you his advice.

FYI, I'm not Carl's partner or anything.  I've used his services before,
and I recommend him highly.

Their website:  http://www.ediconsulting.com/

_________________
Art Tostaine, Jr.
CCA, Inc.
Jackson, NJ 08527

> -----Original Message-----
> From: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
> [mailto:midrange-l-admin@midrange.com]On Behalf Of
> MWalter@hanoverwire.com
> Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 11:24 AM
> To: midrange-l@midrange.com
> Subject: RE: EDI Recommendations
>
>
>
> <snip>
> Does anyone have experience using pc based edi translators?  any
> recommendations (pro or con)? </snip>
>

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