10 - EDI and B2B Solutions

EDI (electronic data interchange) can be used to represent any electronic transmission of data from one place to another. Within Dell Boomi AtomSphere, it includes the electronic exchange of documents between two or more different companies or organizations. The AtomSphere platform adheres to industry standards and at the same time, allows for flexible customization of EDI documents and B2B processes to meet the needs of both your company and trading partners.

Business-to-business (B2B) integration has certain characteristics that differ from intra-organization and application-to-application integration requirements, including:

• The need to validate data against the industry standards such as ANSI X12
• The need to actively acknowledge the receipt and submissions of documents
• The ability to track document information for guaranteed delivery
• The use of common secured communication protocols such as AS2

EDI and B2B solutions are included in their own AtomSphere edition. If you would like to have trading partner and EDI capabilities enabled in your account, please review our EDI Solution Overview and connect with a Dell Boomi Sales Representative.

What Is a Trading Partner?

AtomSphere manages B2B requirements through the implementation of trading partners on the platform. The Trading Partner component contains the configuration details for both your company and your trading partners on two levels:

• Document Standards -- The document types and file options that meet the specifications defined by your company and trading partners. Dell Boomi currently supports the integration of the ANSI X12 EDI standard.
• Communication Methods -- The communication protocols that Dell Boomi supports to send and receive trading partner document data.
  • AS2
  • Disk
  • FTP