Hi,

I would like to say a couple of words about our main software as a service engine (ePortal) that we use to move business documents between your accounting package and business systems (CRM, EDI trading partner, Supply Chain Management, and e-Commerce) .

At eBridge we have  a team of developers who are responsible for developing, maintaining and enhancing our integration software.  Originally, we built our own transaction engine – one that handled various transaction sets.  The result was an engine that needed to be tweaked by our programmers.  Then the decision was made to move to Microsoft BizTalk server as our main transaction engine.  The early stages of the project had its bumps with an immense # of hours dedicated to research and frustration.  We realized the built-in EDI adapter was not sufficient to our needs.

Finally with the release of  BizTalk 2006, our own EDI adapter and many other adapters such as Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Nexternal, and MS CRM  we have very powerful engine that can process thousands of documents per day.  Overall our integration tools and the leverage of Microsoft BizTalk has been right choice and saves us lots of time.  And best of all, the entire system can be managed and monitor by almost anybody.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post – leave me a comment if you would like to discuss this topic further. 

Regards,

George Kredatus

Senior developer

Technology Corner, The ePortal Web-based Transaction Engine Integration as a Service, software as a service, The ePortal Web-based Transaction Engine, transaction processing

Just a quick post to provide an eBRIDGE ePortal update on some of the newer development efforts. Over the past several months we have been working with some extremely high volume clients and understood that waiting even 20 minutes to have documents transact is too long. It is kind of amazing that what was not only accepted but was considered great performance a few years ago is now way too slow. In today’s economy time is money and we understood the importance of timely processing to our customers.

Initially, we developed some management tools that allowed us to see how long each step in the transaction process was taking – from picking up the file initially to conversion and translations. Once we had a view of the times, we were able to re-write several of the slower components into much faster blocks of code. This resulted in an “on average” performance increase of around 30X faster for overall processing.  Our typical transaction time for all ePortal operations is now in the <30 second zone. This, while maintaining around 978,000 active documents through the eBRIDGE ePortal.

While we have had numerous comments about the better performance, I felt a quick update post was in order to spread the message. If you haven’t been on your ePortal account, take a look. We continuously add features and capabilities (and these are available today to all ePortal users).

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ePortal is a online web-based eBusiness document transaction engine that offers subscribers many features.  The types of documents that can be transacted via ePortal are endless.  I am going to focus on EDI and XML for this blog post.

EDI Documents are eBusiness documents that often equate to an accounting document.  The receipt and transmission of EDI documents via ePortal provides our subscribers with the ability to conduct business via EDI with their Trading Partner on the Internet.

All EDI documents received at ePortal are displayed in three different views:

1. The Document In View displays the raw EDI that was received

2. The Document Out View displays the XML Data which is a transformation of the data from EDI to XML if the mapping is in place (stay tuned for a Blog Posting about this)

3. The “human readable” View

Document In View:

Document Out View:

Human Readable, User Friendly View:

The transmission of certain EDI Documents to your trading partners can be handled two ways, manual entry via our online Invoice (810) and Advanced Shipping Notice (856) forms, an XML upload from your business location via the eBridge Integration product or secure FTP data transmission in an agreed upon format.  I will discuss the data views once they are present on ePortal which is independent of how they arrived at ePortal.  If you are interested in establishing a relationship with your trading partners via ePortal please contact our Sales Team at 1-800-755-6921.

All XML Documents received at ePortal are displayed in three different views:

1.  The Document In View displays the XML data that we received

2.  The Document Out View displays the resulting data which is a transformation of the data and may be to EDI or another agreed upon format

3.  The ‘human readable’ View

Document In View:

Document Out View:

Human Readable, User Friendly View:

I hope find this blog posting informative – if you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask or leave a comment.

Thanks,

Natalie.

The ePortal Web-based Transaction Engine, What is the ePortal? edi, ePortal, SaaS, software as a service

Many businesses over the last couple years have turned to software as a service (SaaS) applications for their business needs.  With the increase in network bandwidth and the advancements in Web 2.0 the SaaS model is being adopted by a growing number of organizations of all sizes. 

Today’s IT department has more choices than ever when it comes to deploying the software applications needed by the organization to run its business. While the traditional, on-premise approach of running applications in one’s own datacenter is still dominant, the rising costs and staff requirements associated with supporting on-premise applications - and the underlying infrastructure to run them on - provide a compelling argument for an alternate application delivery model such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Another key advantage of the software as a service (SaaS) delivery model is that it enables small to medium sized companies to operate world class enterprise software – without the high priced hardware, maintenance and other infrastructure costs - just as other large companies do worldwide.  This benefit alone can give you a technical leap in efficiency over your competition.

Here are a few more benefits to consider:

• No expensive hardware to purchase;
• Rapid deployment of the software into production;
• Remote accessibility from anywhere there is an internet connection;
• Maintain a competitive advantage at a low cost;
• Superior protection and security of your data;
• Reduced dependency on IT services;
• Easy partner management - adding trading partners is instantaneous;
• No transaction fees like traditional VANs

These are just some of the advantages of investing in a software as a service solution when looking to streamline your business processes, increase efficiencies and reduce data error. 

To read more about the eBridge ePortal (SaaS) application - Click here.

Dave Malda
Marketing Coordinator

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