Supply chain forges new link - use of Internet to enhance relationships between manufacturers, suppliers and customers - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Software Magazine, Oct, 1996 by Anne Knowles

But Associated Food Stores is waiting for OneWave to port its software to Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX, which the food distributor uses. The company also wants to put in place a series of firewalls for access control before its goes live with its Web site. Says Goodwin, "Security is one of the biggest issues." And that goes for companies much bigger than Associated Food Stores. For example, Associated buys from all the major food manufacturers, including General Mills, and uses EDI with many of them, says Goodwin. But none of them has approached the distributor about switching from expensive value-added networks (VANs) to the more affordable Internet as a transport mechanism for their EDI transactions. The main reason, according to Goodwin, is security. "We hope someday we'll do EDI over the Internet," he says. "Everyone talks about it, but I don't know anyone who is doing it."

Security is a major roadblock, agrees Henry Bruce, vice president of marketing, Industri-Matematik International (IMI) Corp., a supply-chain software developer in Tarrytown, N.Y. "Most of our customers have plans to do this, but we won't see active implementations until 1997."

"In terms of security, the tools are here, but there isn't enough confidence in them yet," says Olin Thompson, senior vice president at Marcam Corp., an ERP software vendor in Newton, Mass. "Everyone wants other people to do it first."

Internet performance is the other concern. "The Internet has rush hour traffic and users need consistent performance," says Mark Galloway, vice pre-sident of product market- ing at Lawson Software, Minneapolis. But Galloway sees that improving gradually. Telecommunications companies like AT&T, MCI and others are starting to offer semi-private networks that supplement the Internet, he says. These networks use Web standards and provide more reliable performance. As for security, IMI's Bruce believes value-added network pro-viders will pick up the slack. "The VANs will take responsibility for securing access to the network," says Bruce. "It is a definite service that needs to be provided and VANs have expertise in this area."

In the meantime, most of the companies testing the waters are smaller concerns like Southern Surgical Supply Co., a $10 million distributor of medical supplies to physicians' offices, nursing homes and home health-care providers. According to Martin Polo, vice pres- ident of the Tampa, Fla., wholesaler, Southern Surgical is working to deploy an order processing system for its 1,200 customers on the Web. "We want to offer our customers something that the competition hasn't done yet. About 20% of our customers are asking for this kind of capability, but those 20% make up 60% of our sales," says Polo. "As a small company, the technology is affordable if you find the right product and the right people to work with."

Polo is using a Web-enabled version of the SQL*Time financial applications suite from Design Data Systems Corp. in Largo, Fla. Southern Surgical and Design Data Systems are working to develop a system that will use a duplicate of the distributor's existing Oracle Corp. database, so as to limit the access needed to the main system, says Polo. The duplicate will run on an Oracle Web server. The first phase of the project will provide remote access for the company's sales people as well as several of the supplier's large customers.