[ebxml-dev] ebXML CPA/CPP Estimate

[Mike Rawlins <mike@rawlinsecconsulting.com>]

One more note on this before I excuse myself from this discussion for
awhile:

I seem to have hit a few nerves with my estimate of the ebXML CPA/CPP
only having a .2 probability of achieving critical mass (at least as I
have defined it).  These discussions have caused me to carefully
reconsider this assessment, though I haven't changed it yet.  What I
would like to offer is a more specific rationale for a relatively low
estimate, whatever the value is.  Again, I will fall back to current EDI
practice, since that's the best we have to work with.  My experience has
been that configuring an EDI management system for a new trading partner
in most cases takes only 5% to 10% of the total effort of bringing a new
partner into production.  Your mileage may vary, but that is less than
an hour for me, including e-mails, phone calls, etc.  The remaining 90%
+ of the effort is elsewhere - developing the transformations, testing,
etc.  Given that we can at best achieve a 10% reduction in effort by
automating most of the trading partner configuration, is there
sufficient ROI for vendors to implement and end users to use?

A few caveats to this analogy:  Exchanging information securely over the
public Internet using the ebXML MHS requires more configuration options
to be specified than is the case with a typical EDI system.  So, in the
ebXML model the configuration may represent a larger percentage of the
effort, and therefore there may be a greater savings from using the
CPA/CPP.  In addition, if the whole ebXML vision is ever fully realized
(which I'm *not* taking for granted any time in the near future) the
remaining efforts (that take 90% of the effort in the EDI model) may be
so reduced that manual configuration could take much more than 10% of
the total effort.  This provides additional justification for the
CPA/CPP.  Open-source, public domain (free or low cost) implementations
of the MHS with CPA support incorporated may make CPA/CPP implementation
even more likely (but don't expect me to buy into the BPSS!).  On the
down side, an SME still has to figure out how to fill out the CPP (by
whatever means), and what to do when the automated negotiation of a CPA
doesn't reach a workable conclusion.

Your thoughts?

--
Michael C. Rawlins, Rawlins EC Consulting
www.rawlinsecconsulting.com