Most of the large retail providers and consumer product suppliers such as Walmart, Amazon, Morgan Foods, etc. have decided to go with AS2 protocol in the last few years. Based on this trend, all of their suppliers are asked to send their invoices, purchase orders, and other B2B trading messages over AS2. Because of that, the trend for usage of AS2 has been significantly increased over the last couple of years. In this blog, I’m going to explain how to get started with AS2 protocol and how you send and receive AS2 messages using two software applications which provide AS2 capabilities.
What Is AS2?
In simple terms, the Applicability Statement 2 or AS2 specification defines a mechanism for secure and reliable transfer of structured business data over the Internet. In contrast to other traditional B2B trading protocols, AS2 offers a secure, efficient, and simple to use trading environment without a need for proprietary devices, software, or expensive private networks or value added networks. If you are new to AS2 protocol, I highly recommend you read this description of AS2 protocol before going to use it in your production requirements. It describes what AS2 is, why we need AS2, and its key benefits in simple terms, and you don’t have to have a technical background to understand it. If you have some technical background and you want to know how the protocol operates over the HTTP/S protocol, you can refer to this and get a better understanding of the implementation of the AS2 protocol. https://goo.gl/Ucqw3P #DataIntegration #ML
