In the President’s last blog post, “Loren Data is where the Developers hang out“, Todd wrote about the developer community gaining momentum around the ECGridOS API.
ECGridOS is designed for tackling projects at great scale, such as B2B cloud systems with multitenant account models. Even newcomers find that ECGridOS is a decent way to gradually approach the arcane world of VANs and As2 Communications. Todd is currently the EDI’s sector’s leading communications architect, and he designed both ECGrid and ECGridOS to be an interactive canvas where developers take the initiative in writing their chapter of “the Commerce Cloud”.
As the community of ECGridOS developers gains even more fluency in the API’s functional repertoire, the collective knowledge becomes a ‘prime mover’ of the sector’s future growth and vitality. It happened with Netware in its time, and with Microsoft developer tools, of course. It can happen in B2B Communications – a specialized science made much easier with ECGridOS, the programmer’s gateway to integrated EDI Communications.
Steve Redler of SR-Tech
The B2B Communications sector will thrive as long as we continue to honor the innovators . Loren Data Corp is doing its part by delivering a robust platform architecture for delivering and managing comms services. ECGridOS is one large round of ammunition in our creative ammo belts, and we need such tools to foment a long overdue revolution and renaissance in hosted B2B e-commerce applications.
Today, I am interviewing a genuine B2B systems guru, and a new ECGridOS Power Developer: Mr. Steve Redler of SR-Technologies. 
It’s a great honor to profile Steve, (as an ECGridOS developer). He is an experienced B2B developer – savvy and innovative, and not swayed by hype-cycles in the least. Steve is also unique, as he builds entire systems from the racks on up- he builds the servers, he configures the OS (Linux), he writes customized production applications, and then integrates with OEM system software as required. Finally, he provisions EDI partner communications for his clients in branded foods manufacturing and distribution. Steve is a TCL guru; TCL is one of the most powerful and flexible, yet overlooked cross-platform programming languages – and now Steve is an ECGridOS Power Developer – proving again that ECGridOS web services are language independent, and deployable in any run-time environment.
This class of ‘whole systems engineering’ places the EDI Communications platform at the juncture of Steve’s “Mission Critical Line of Business Outcomes”; so, there is no fooling around when Steve Redler commits to a Communications Platform.I interviewed Steve, asking him to summarize his impressions of ECGridOS as a communications platform for managing EDI based trading communities. Steve also weighed in on his impressions of working with Loren Data as a company.
Here are some of the highlights that I was able to glean from this very experienced B2B systems architect and emeritus developer:Steve Redler: “I am up to my hip waders in EDI implementations. I cover all aspects of the systems architecture, and I currently operate a heterogeneous mix of AS2 hubs and VAN communications for my gaggle of large scale food industry businesses. I wanted a unified system that would give me integrated control over communications; I discovered more in the 150 functions of ECGridOS, than in any combination of commercial AS2 software and VAN accounts – some things really stand out for me, i.e., integration with my code, the speed of deployment, and the reliability of Loren Data’s ECGrid Network.”
“…particularly in speed of deployment – I was able to add ECGridOS communications functions to existing applications in a matter of hours. As I become more familiar with the scope of this platform, I see that it’s more than just a replacement to send and receive EDI messages…it’s a system specifically tuned for coupling extensible EDI network management functionality into applications.”
“…On capabilities: “I’m now fairly comfortable with the comprehensive functions in ECGridOS – Getting trading partners paired up, or ‘interconnected’, was once a slow and painful exercise, ECGridOS makes nearly instantaneous. Most of the tasks of managing a trading community, creating mailboxes, getting message status, customizing reports, etc., are now native functions within my application code.”
Only an API gives the applications engineer this fine control and manageability. This is precisely what (integrated manageability) is lacking in VAN-based comms, which are limited to uploads and downloads, with control and status delivered externally.”
“….On the As2 front, I presently use an open source AS2 solution, I will not subject my clients to expensive commercial As2 packages. ECGridOS As2 operates in harmony with ECGrid VAN messaging functions – adding certificate management and configuration functions. This is the only programmer friendly system unifying As2 and VAN comms, which is what I require. I plan to have all my applications call ECGridOS for EDI Comms,”.
How would you summarize the experience so far using ECGridOS as the means of embedding EDI Communications and Trading Partner Management into your Client’s Applications?
“…Using ECGridOS has been a great experience, and I actually enjoy using the API. I have dealt with under-performing software and comms providers. Indeed, my move to Open Source OS’s and development languages was motivated by a desire to take back control from outside resources. Anything that gives me better than expected results and that exceeds my expectations, is worthy of adoption into SR-Tech’s EDI Repertoire.”
“ECGridOS gives me options that I never had before:
1) it’s fast to deploy customized B2B comms services, 2) it makes the difficult almost trivial, 3) it’s the programmer’s gateway to ECGrid – a network tuned for integrators and service providers.
ECGridOS does it all, is robust, it really works, and that’s what a system’s architect wants in a B2B Communications Platform.”
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I want to sincerely thank Steve Redler for his contribution to this article profiling ECGridOS developers. We can look forward to Steve’s future contributions on the Loren Data Developer Forum.
Interested parties may contact Steve via the comments section of this blog, or drop a me a note via the the contact page, and I will hook you up with Steve.
If the ECGridOS community continues to attract developers like Steve Redler, we can indeed look forward to a very bright future.
