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By Felicity Ussher, 30 June 1998 14:39

NEWS EDI (electronic data interchange) looks set to be transformed into a business tool for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) according to Ovum's latest report. Beth Barling, co-author of the report, 'Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce: Opening the Market,' says that next-generation EDI is heading for the Internet, either as an object-oriented language, or as a combined protocol with the eXtensible mark-up language (XML). "The XML protocol gives an open Web interface to what was always a proprietary computer-to-computer transaction," she said. "Users will no longer have to support all their partner systems, and the combined EDI/XML protocol presents data in a readable format." The American National Standards Institute is still thrashing out EDI/XML. "It will be at least six months before software vendors come on board," Baring added, "but software such as Intuit and Sage could integrate the protocol and make EDI affordable for SMEs." The Web interface also enables brokers and intermediaries to enter the EDI supply chain. "Cheap services from brokers such as the Band-X bandwidth traders would be impossible without the Internet," said Baring. Baring's report is the first of three volumes from Ovum. Volume Two, due at the end of August, will consider new ways of integrating applications across the supply chain. Volume Three, due in October, will look at the effect of business-to-business ecommerce on the network service market.