AWS recently introduced B2B Data Interchange, a platform allowing organizations to automate and monitor the transformation of EDI-based business transactions. The service provides a low-code interface for managing trading partners and translating EDI documents into JSON and XML formats.
B2B Data Interchange supports the X12 EDI data format and manages trading partner relationships, enabling customers to automatically exchange and transform EDI workflows. Originating in the 1970s, Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the electronic exchange of documents in a standard electronic format between business partners. Sébastien Stormacq, principal developer advocate at AWS, writes:
Despite being a more than 50-year-old technology, traditional self-managed EDI solutions deployed to parse, validate, map, and translate data from business applications to EDI data formats are difficult to scale as the volume of business changes. They typically do not provide much operational visibility into communication and content errors. These challenges often oblige businesses to fall back to error-prone email document exchanges.
B2B Data Interchange defines transformation steps and partnerships. Transformation steps involve converting one document format to another, while partnerships are dedicated resources that establish a relationship with a specific trading partner: they include details about the partner, the types of EDI documents shared, and the transformation of those documents into JSON or XML formats. The service automatically converts EDI documents into a default JSON or XML formatted output, with additional customizations applied automatically for custom JSON and XML formats. Stormacq adds:
This allows you to build event-driven applications for real-time business data processing or to integrate business documents with your existing analytics or AI/ML solutions. For example, when you receive a new EDI business document, you can trigger additional routing, processing, and transformation logic using AWS Step Functions or Amazon EventBridge.
AWS provides a list of currently supported X12 transaction sets across various categories, including transportation, communications and controls, supply chain, and finance. However, it currently does not support healthcare transaction sets. If an EDI input file contains multiple transactions, each must have the same set and version. Otherwise, the transformer cannot parse the file.
Among the possible use cases, the cloud provider emphasizes streaming B2B transactions, connecting and interacting with trading partners, and integrating with data lakes in real time.
B2B Data Interchange is not the only option to handle EDI on AWS: Ripunjaya Pattnaik, and Prasad Shetty, enterprise solutions architects at AWS, show how to build a serverless cloud-native EDI solution, while Transfer Family supports the transfer of files over SFTP, AS2, FTPS, and FTP into S3 or EFS.
Available in the console, using the B2B Data Interchange API or the SDK, the new service charges $8.00 per month per partnership, plus $0.01 per transformation by each 200KB input increment. B2B Data Interchange is currently available only in three US regions: Ohio, Northern Virginia, and Oregon.