EDI4RCOM

X.400 is a well-established messaging standard for the EDI community. It combines fair (but considerable) volume costs with very low one-off costs when adding new partner relationships and easy maintenance of local client software. While Internet-based alternatives like EDIINT-AS2 drew a lot of attention in recent years due to their elimination of volume costs, X.400's advantages on one-off costs and maintenance still make it the number one choice for EDI messaging for (mostly European) small and medium-sized business (SMB) partners.

Until recently, X.400 client installations required proprietary software like P7 clients and / or special hardware for the creation of VPN tunnels between a client and the X.400 service provider (ADMD). The accompanying initial one-off costs - negligible for large companies, but considerable for SMBs - can now be avoided: T-Systems' BusinessMail X.400 service now features MessageGate, a component that mediates mailbox access via any Internet path, based on https/WebDAV (and some other protocols).

The EDI4RCom project presented here now provides everything a client needs to make effective use of this new X.400 access alternative, including a Tracking & Tracing feature. It can be run standalone as the messaging component of a complete freeware EDI infrastructure on the basis of the converter library EDI4R. Alternatively, it may be combined with the EDI Hub project by providing a shared gateway to X.400 services for all hub members.