Moving B2B transactions to the cloud? EDI experts have you covered.

Companies across the globe are moving to the cloud. They’re seeking modern solutions to help keep up with the needs of today and tomorrow.

A 2023 study of IT executives at 850 companies found that nearly 70% of the companies had started to migrate their operations to the cloud in the past year. But many are finding they don’t have the EDI experts they need on hand to make these migrations as successful as they could be.

Cloud adoption is accelerating

Enterprises worldwide are accelerating their move to the cloud. From remote work becoming the norm to a need to tighten budgets or security concerns and talent shortages, many companies are moving to the cloud to sustain the business.

One recent study on the state of the cloud showed that 80% of the companies surveyed leverage public and private clouds for their businesses. Nearly 90% said they had adopted a multi-cloud strategy.

Meanwhile, Axway’s Open Everything Strategy Survey found that 1/3 of IT decision-makers are using a managed cloud service provider as part of their strategy.

These businesses moved to the cloud to curb costs, improve service delivery, and strengthen the security around their B2B transactions. They also want to be able to scale their IT infrastructure in the coming years.

For OneHealthPort, a health information exchange (HIE) service provider, the rollout of a stable cloud environment caused the volume of B2B transactions to skyrocket. The elasticity and flexibility of a cloud-managed service allowed them to meet growing demands while maintaining high performance.

Legacy EDI systems are showing their age

You may still wonder if your organization is ready to transition to the cloud. Perhaps you’re worried about losing control and visibility or sailing into uncharted waters with a new B2B cloud solution.

However, remaining heavily reliant on legacy EDI processes also comes with risks.

Enterprise IT leaders need to assess the total cost of ownership and the risks involved in continuing with a full EDI system. As the volume of EDI traffic continues to rise exponentially, along with the number of B2B cloud trading partners, your EDI system must be able to scale accordingly.

The harsh reality is that many legacy EDI systems are nearing the end of their useful lives. IT executives are challenged to justify the high costs and complexity of operating, maintaining, and staffing these systems.

Olaneo Consulting has seen this play out for many logistics and retail clients. One of these clients, a warehouse, transportation, and distribution leader in France, watched the management of on-premises EDI services become costlier as its business expanded into multiple time zones. Migrating to the cloud has helped clients like this drive business growth and develop customer-centric services.

Not enough EDI experts to go around

There are other risks in maintaining your enterprise’s EDI status quo. Those risks include the potential loss of seasoned IT veterans who have handled your systems for years. These skilled in-house workers know your EDI systems inside out. What happens to your EDI system when they retire?

Younger IT workers may not have the knowledge base or the inclination to work with an ‘old’ technology. These younger employees are likely more geared to working with cloud capabilities. If your company isn’t making some headway into cloud adoption, you might also risk losing good employees to other firms.

At the same time, there’s a need to inject API-driven solutions into your processes. The modern B2B ecosystem requires combining new EDI and API cloud solutions and expertise to support organizational change. That way, companies can fuel innovation and onboard faster. A legacy EDI system fails to give you an API-ready infrastructure or the expertise to manage APIs in a collaborative managed cloud environment.

Learn more about how leaving behind legacy EDI systems reduces risk.

Marketplace hesitancy

In speaking with enterprises around this topic, I’ve noticed some hesitancy towards cloud adoption. Migrating to a cloud B2B integration platform brings up common concerns about costs, security, and possible disruptions to business continuity.  Still, other companies have expressed that they lack the in-house human talent to drive such a B2B cloud adoption for the company.

B2B cloud migration is a challenging project for any organization. There are increasingly more requirements needed to ensure security and compliance. IT decision-makers are also concerned with how cyber threats could compromise data privacy and create security issues.

Moving to the cloud involves more than just throwing a software switch. It’s a journey of integrating EDI and API-driven processes to support a more robust digital ecosystem:

Organizations need a service provider to handle the integration challenge and fill the role of in-house experts. This eliminates hesitation about having the right internal resources to handle this move.

That’s precisely why finding the right partner to manage your cloud B2B integrations should be a priority now: outsourcing your B2B operations to trusted EDI experts allows you to offset risk and enable efficient change.

Make the move to the cloud on your own terms

Much has been written about how cloud adoption makes your organization more scalable and flexible. It’s absolutely true.

Thanks to the cloud, companies can reduce costs, achieve higher levels of transparency and flexibility, strengthen security, and become more efficient at delivering services and resources to meet infrastructure and business demands.

However, the way you adopt the cloud can also be flexible. Our Axway B2B Integration platform gives you multiple options for moving your B2B/EDI into the cloud. You can move in stages or delegate portions of your EDI operations at the start. Plus, your team can move any cloud implementation back to on-premises in the future.

Moreover, you’re not restricted to a single technology path such as point-to-point EDI, web-based EDI, VAN, or API connectivity. Instead, the Axway B2B Integration platform offers the flexibility to command them all and apply the right technology to each unique partner relationship.

With Axway Managed Cloud Services, you gain all these cloud benefits while outfitting your business with a modern, integrated solution that maximizes agility and resiliency.

Our managed services approach makes getting up and running in the cloud easier and faster. It is optimized for mission-critical processes and high SLAs.

Axway’s team keeps the solutions up to date and secure with the latest updates, letting your team focus on revenue-generating activities rather than maintenance of the EDI ecosystem.

All the while, you can leave behind the hassle of finding skilled professionals to take care of traditional EDI processes alongside modern API, iPaaS, and cloud-driven workflows.

If you’re an IT decision-maker looking to bring your infrastructure to the cloud so you can scale your business faster, working with an experienced partner can reduce your risks.

See also: Axway named a Leader in IDC MarketScape for Business-to-Business Middleware: Preparing the future of B2B Integration

EDI experts are the trusted partner to help future-proof your business

We’ve helped enterprises around the world deploy securely to the cloud – from healthcare organizations to manufacturing, governments, and logistics consulting. They have successfully migrated, modernized, and extended their integration ecosystems with our help.

Axway’s B2B Integration EDI experts work with these partners to handle the daily operation of their environments. This results in improved uptime, better SLAs, and faster onboarding while reducing overall operating costs.

When it comes to moving your B2B operations to the cloud, we have you covered.

Axway will provide resources to answer your growing business demand. Run more transactions, reinforce your traditional EDI processes (whether via Point-To-Point EDI, VAN, or an EDI supplier portal), leverage and integrate with new API-driven processes, or expand geographically. We’ll take care of it all.