Why the OASIS Business Document Exchange TC is important for thefuture of e-business

[Mikkel Hippe Brun <mhb@tradeshift.com>]

[The following is an attempt to motivate why the work of the BDX TC is
important and why you should join.]

Exchange of most business documents still happens on paper. Why is it
that we in 2011 after several decades of use of advanced ERP solutions
and PC’s at everyone’s desk still use paper as a medium to carry data
between IT systems in different organizations?

The answer is simple:

We use paper as a medium to carry data between IT-systems in different
organizations because we have still not solved the interoperability
problem between service providers. And there are several layers of
interoperability that we must address:

- Organizational interoperability: Alignment of business processes and
business models
- Legal interoperability: Alignment of legislative frameworks ensures
a level legal playing field
- Semantic interoperability: The content and semantic meaning of
business documents
- Technical interoperability: Transport protocols, security, trust

But one may argue that we have interoperable answers for each of the
interoperability layers. E.g. the OASIS UBL TC has standardized
semantic interoperability for a number of business documents. The CEN
WS BII has standardized a number of business processes describing the
exchange of UBL documents. The ebXML framework has provided technical
interoperability with ebMS and a whole framework for entering
bilateral exchange agreements.

This is all good - but it is not a complete solution! No single
framework has described interoperability across all layers where
different service providers acts as intermediaries between businesses
(the four-corner-model).

And the SMTP/Email model does not work when it comes to real
e-business with exchange of business documents carrying real value.
Elements like trust mechanisms, addressing mechanisms, security in
transport and non-repudiation becomes very important when we exchange
confidential business data.

The OASIS Business Document Exchange (BDX) TC aims to specify the
remaining pieces in the four-corner-model.

- Establishing trust between service providers
- Addressing recipients and their capabilities between service providers
- Secure and reliable transport between service providers
- Secure and reliable transport between a service provider and an end customer

The vision of the BDX TC is that one or more global instances of
service provider networks built on the BDX specifications will evolve.
This would allow a seller in the US to receive a purchase order and
return an invoice to the corresponding buyer in Spain. It would be
sufficient for the buyer and seller to be connected to independent
service providers. The service provider may never have exchange
business documents between each other before but the exchange will
still go through.

If you can recognize some of these challenges and would like to
contribute to the solution – then I encourage you to join the BDX TC.
Lets solve this now – once and for all.

Mikkel Hippe Brun
Chair, OASIS BDX TC
CSO & Co-founder, Tradeshift
[This has also been posted to
http://blog.schemaworks.com/2011/01/why-oasis-business-document-exchange-tc.html]