Message from the ASC X12 Chair

Mapping Integrated E-Business Solutions for the New Millennium by David Barkley

We are entering an era of abundance. People and companies want choices. It's not a matter of either/or. The emergence of extensible markup language (XML) and Internet-related technologies is one of many opportunities for X12 to utilize the wealth of multiple tools to meet our long standing goal of integrated electronic business processes. Just as mainframes and client servers have come together in new network architectures, X12 transactions and data dictionaries offer time tested solutions and expanded opportunities when implemented over new networks like the Internet.

As businesses move into Y2K and re-deploy their resources to new business priorities, there is a pent-up demand for e-commerce applications. The X12 Committee's years of experience in achieving open, neutral, consensus-based standards to interconnect business functions offers advantages to those who are mystified or intimidated by the complex number of proprietary, vendor-based solutions being generated each day.

Our challenge is to understand the gaps that these proprietary solutions are trying to fill and see where we can offer open, neutral solutions instead. To accomplish this, we must accelerate our development, review and approval procedures. We must consider how our existing X12 transactions, dictionaries and guidelines can be better utilized in an Internet-based world to leverage our members' investment in electronic data interchange(EDI).

We need to apply our skills at the standards development level to meet the challenges of the global marketplace. To encourage integrated electronic exchange, we are working to represent X12 semantics in an XML format to support the data transfer needs of a broad base of users, including small and medium sized enterprises. We must also continue to synchronize the functionality across X12 and UN/EDIFACT as we work to build common solutions.

As the alternatives for how to format the data increase, the meaning of the underlying business data becomes more important. Through X12's Strategic Implementation Task Group, we must continue our strategic efforts to implement a next generation of EDI utilizing data models and object-oriented EDI. To achieve true application and hardware compatibility or "pervasive computing," there must be consistent process "building blocks." X12 will work to expand its capabilities to capture both the underlying business data and the business processes they support.

For comments or questions to the ASC X12 Chair, send email to X12Chair@disa.org