Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

For Oil-Dri Corp., manufacturer of Johnny Cat and other premium kitty litters, it was never a question of whether to implement AS2. Since its biggest customer, Wal-Mart, announced last year that its suppliers would need to start sending electronic data interchange (EDI) documents over the Internet using the new AS2 spec, it was more a matter of how the company was going to do it. This spring, Oil-Dri went live with LANSA's AS2 Direct product on an iSeries server, and met Wal-Mart's deadline.

If you've ever lived with an indoor cat, chances are you've used one of Oil-Dri's products. The Chicago company, founded in 1941 as a distributor of clay floor absorbents, manufacturers about 25 percent of the kitty litter used in the United States, it claims, including its own Cat's Pride and Lasting Pride brands. Oil-Dri also manufacturers kitty litter for other companies, including Johnny Cat, which it makes for The Clorox Company for the Eastern United States, and Arm & Hammer's Super Clay.

Although kitty litter isn't Oil-Dri's only product, it accounts for the bulk of the company's sales. In 2002, the company had total revenues of $162 million, and more than $100 million of that came from kitty litter. What's more, Wal-Mart buys about 22 percent of the company's litter, according to annual report, making Wal-Mart Oil-Dri's biggest customer.

So when Wal-Mart, which is also the world's biggest company, announced last August that all of its suppliers would need to start transmitting their EDI documents over the Internet using a relatively young security specification called Applicability Statement 2, or AS2, it was an easy decision on Oil-Dri's part. The company didn't want to do anything to jeopardize the valuable relationship. It would implement AS2, too.

AS2 is one of the most promising new Internet technologies to gain industry support in recent memory. The technology provides a set of specifications for securely sending and receiving any type of file, including EDI, XML, or flat files, over the Internet. The specification uses a variety of techniques to secure the documents, including HTTPS, encryption, and digital signatures. The AS2 specification was established by the Internet Engineering Task Force in 2001, and today a dozen or so AS2 products are certified as "eBusinessReady" by the Uniform Code Council and Drummond Group, two respected industry organizations that oversee product interoperability testing.

With a May 2003 deadline looming on the horizon, Oil-Dri started looking at AS2 products. The company, an AS/400 shop (like an estimated 40 percent of Wal-Mart's suppliers), tried out three AS2 packages before finally making its selection. The AS2 packages it looked at were Cyclone Commerce, Cleo's Lexicom, and LANSA's AS2 Direct, all of which run natively on OS/400.

As Oil-Dri tested the AS2 software, several of its retail customers also expressed an interest in receiving their EDI documents over the Internet, using AS2 to secure them, says Ron Rymarczyk, EDI manager. Oil-Dri uses EDI with about 50 of its largest retail customers, he says, and the fact that some of them are looking to follow Wal-Mart's lead on AS2 and EDI-INT factored heavily in Oil-Dri's ultimate product decision.

Allison Park, Oil-Dri's IT director, says the packages offered similar functionality and that all appeared capable of doing the job. What made the biggest difference, she says, was licensing. LANSA was offering a license to connect to an unlimited number of partners; whereas other vendors were charging about $1,000 per additional connection. "We chose a solution that offers unlimited partners," she says. "More and more of our customers are requesting the AS2 solution due to the cost-savings."

Another factor influencing Park's decision was the fact that Oil-Dri has been a LANSA shop since 1991. The company developed its own ERP system in LANSA's fourth-generation language and is comfortable with the software vendor and its products. However, that inside track only went so far for LANSA. While Park and Rymarczyk are both RDML (LANSA's 4GL) programmers, LANSA AS2 Direct is a shrink-wrapped product and doesn't require the user to be a LANSA expert. "The fact that it's LANSA is transparent," Rymarczyk says.

This April, Oil-Dri went live with LANSA AS2 Direct, meeting its May deadline (others have until October 2003). The software runs on an iSeries Model 820 and transmits documents generated by the company's EDI translation software, the Sterling Commerce Gentran Integration Suite. Today, the company sends about 150 EDI documents, including purchase orders, invoices, and shipping documents, to Wal-Mart using AS2 Direct, and the company is in the process of getting several more retailers online with EDI over the Internet.

However, traditional EDI isn't going away anytime soon. Oil-Dri still must maintain its expensive value-added-network lines to serve retailers that require traditional EDI connectivity. While Oil-Dri's move to AS2 is more about maintaining good standing with its biggest customers than cutting its own costs, Park foresees a day--perhaps several years away--when Oil-Dri may be able to benefit from AS2 more directly: by renegotiating--or ending entirely--their value-added-network contracts. "It appears EDI over the Internet is the wave of the future," she says.

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FAST400

What makes IBM different from Microsoft regarding Fast400??

What is Fast400?

You are hearing a lot about Fast400 aren't you? But what is Fast400? Fast400 is a "tuning" product for the iSeries. Fast400 will allow an iSeries server to utilize the available CPW for interactive processing. IBM would have you believe that these interactive cards that cost thousands to millions of dollars, actually add value to your server. By buying Fast400, you do not ever need to buy another interactive card for your iSeries. For a free demonstration of Fast400, please visit www.fast400.net.

Why Fast400?

A few years ago Microsoft would not let other software companies build tools to work with the Windows operating system. Microsoft did all kinds of scurrilous things to stop other manufacturers' software from working on their platform. They would put code in the base operating system that prevented other companies code from working properly. IBM even had these issues with Operations Navigator. In the early days of Operations Navigator, the developers in Rochester had to scrap early versions because Microsoft did not want IBM leverage on what was proprietary to them. Netscape also had a few problems using the Windows operating system.

The result

Now we all know what happened to Microsoft. After spending tens of millions of our tax dollars in the trial, the US government told Microsoft that they were acting as a monopoly and what they did was not right or fair.

The similarity

IBM is doing exactly the same thing to Fast400 as Microsoft did. IBM has changed the operating system of the iSeries 400 to prevent Fast400 from working. In fact this has been done several times now, and each time the Fast400 developers produce a new fix to circumvent the IBM action. Why does IBM do this? because Fast400 takes money out of IBM's pocket. The potential for IBM to make billions from its user base, for delivering virtually no product is tantamount to corporate deception! Did IBM change the operating system when EMC introduced a low cost storage solution for the iSeries?

The future

The cat and mouse game between IBM and Fast400 is already a year old. Every time IBM changes the operating system to disable Fast400, the developers of Fast400 produce a new version within days to enable it again. Does Fast400 have a commercial agenda? Of course it does. Fast400 is in business to provide its clients with added benefits, which will maximise the interactive performance of iSeries 400 servers. And as we are a business, why shouldn't we charge a nominal fee for that service? A fee that our clients see as being fair and proper. After all, it's not Fast400 that is making enemies in the user base. As long as IBM wants to play "David and Goliath" we will continue to "out" the giant. Fast400 is not running, you can be assured!!

For more information, please visit www.fast400.net.