\nBefore I answer that question, let\u2019s take a look how it actually works, without getting too technical.<\/strong><\/p>\n
At the heart of blockchain technology is a public distributed ledger, through which all the transactions or \u201cblocks\u201d of information passes. Think of it as similar to the transaction feed that shows up on you online banking account. The ledger is replicated and preserved on multiple servers in a P2P (Peer-to-Peer) network and all participants authorized to a specific blockchain receives a copy of it. This means that you\u2019ll have a very high level of data redundancy, no central point of failure and very low risk of losing any data.<\/p>\n
The \u201cblocks\u201d of information are organized in a chain and each has a unique ID, through which it is linked to the next block. If any information in any particular block is changed, this unique ID also changes and breaks the chain,\u00a0 so much like a bank transaction, a single block cannot be changed, without also changing all the blocks\/transactions that follows. This means the whole chain of blocks would need to be re-calculated and also approved by 51% of the participants in the chain, so making changes to an existing transaction is very difficult. Instead in a B2B scenario, changes would be added on as a new \u201ccorrective\u201d blocks. This immutability and required consensus, together with strong encryption of the data are some of the corner stones of the block chain\u2019s security characteristics.<\/p>\n
Another feature is something called\u00a0 \u201cSmart Contracts\u201d, which allows the participants of a particular block chain to agree on a set of specific rules, which are automatically executed when a certain condition is met. These will come to play a significant role, especially in electronic trading to eliminate exceptions and validating the data.<\/p>\n
So without further ado, let\u2019s take a look at what Block Chain technology can do for EDI.<\/strong><\/p>\n In contrast to current EDI transactions, which are one-way and point-to-point messages, with a blockchain you would have a shared information flow with transparency, auditability and visibility by all participants in a supply-chain process. This would eliminate the need for functional acknowledgements, used extensively in EDI today, to confirm that a particular transaction have been received or not. It would also safeguard the sequence of the transactions in a particular business process. Furthermore, any new transactions would be validated in real-time by smart contract rules, which would reduce or maybe eliminate any exceptions altogether.<\/p>\n Since the ledger is distributed on multiple servers and shared by all trading partners in a particular business process, the risk of losing any transactions would be next to none. Looking ahead it would also be possible to add on additional non-traditional EDI information to the block chain in real-time, such data from various IoT (Internet-Of-Things) devices, such as scanners and delivery trucks, to further improve real-time visibility across the Supply Chain.<\/p>\n It is definitely an interesting technology and expect to hear more about how this will improve B2B transactions in the coming years.<\/p>\n About the Author<\/strong> Blockchain technology has quickly become a major Buzzword, spurred on by the recent media attention on Cryptocurrencies. In fact, Blockchain technology has been around since the early 1990\u2019s, originally proposed as a way to handling documents securely, but only with the advent of Bitcoins did it reach the hype that it has today. I am … Continue reading “EDI and Blockchain – A match made in heaven?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11,13,15,21],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blockchain","tag-blockchain","tag-edi","tag-erp","tag-integration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/integrationwizards.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/integrationwizards.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/integrationwizards.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integrationwizards.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integrationwizards.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/integrationwizards.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integrationwizards.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/integrationwizards.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integrationwizards.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/integrationwizards.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"blockchain\"](\"https:\/\/cp64.ezyreg.com\/~jis\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/blockchain.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nThe inherent nature of the blockchain, with its immutability, encrypted data and consensus of changes across all participants would make it next to impossible for hackers to fraudulently manipulate the data, which is also one of the reasons banks are adopting the technology.<\/p>\n
\nMathias Wallgren has worked with data integration for the past 15 years, both overseas and locally.
\nHe currently works with Integration Wizards, an Infor Partner specializing in Infor M3 MEC™, Infor ION™ and Infor Cloverleaf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"