A Value Added Network (VAN) is a private, third-party network service that provides enhanced communication and data exchange capabilities to businesses and organizations. VANs play a crucial role in facilitating electronic data interchange (EDI) and electronic commerce (e-commerce) transactions between trading partners, helping them exchange information efficiently and securely.
Here’s a breakdown of what a VAN is and who it serves:
- Network Infrastructure: A VAN is essentially a network infrastructure that acts as an intermediary between different organizations. It consists of a collection of communication servers, routers, and switches that enable the secure and reliable exchange of electronic documents and data between businesses.
- Enhanced Services: VANs offer various value-added services on top of basic data transmission. These services can include data translation and transformation, data validation, error checking and correction, data archiving, auditing, and reporting. These enhancements help ensure data integrity and compliance with specific industry standards.
- Security and Compliance: VANs prioritize security, employing encryption and secure protocols to protect sensitive data during transmission. They often adhere to industry-specific compliance standards and regulations, such as HIPAA in healthcare or EDIFACT in international trade, to ensure that data exchanges meet legal requirements.
- Trading Partner Connectivity: VANs serve a wide range of businesses and industries, including manufacturing, retail, healthcare, finance, and logistics. Their primary purpose is to enable these organizations to communicate effectively with their trading partners, such as suppliers, customers, and distributors.
- Data Format Conversion: One of the critical functions of a VAN is to convert data from one format to another. This is particularly important in EDI, where different organizations may use different data formats and standards for their documents. The VAN acts as a mediator, translating data to ensure compatibility between trading partners.
- Reliability and Redundancy: VANs are designed for high reliability and availability. They often have redundant data centers and communication links to minimize downtime and ensure uninterrupted data exchange. This reliability is essential for businesses that rely on real-time or near-real-time data for their operations.
- Cost-Efficiency: VANs can help organizations reduce costs related to EDI and data exchange. By outsourcing these services to a VAN, businesses can avoid the need to build and maintain their own complex network infrastructure and can benefit from the VAN’s economies of scale.
York Worldwide’s FOUNDATION™ VAN allows you to funnel all of your data traffic to and from your trading partners into a single connection.
By using your own mailbox connection on FOUNDATION, you can send and receive with any customer or supplier on any other network.
True Tier 1 VANs connect with each other via “interconnects,” and FOUNDATION has Tier 1 interconnects with every major VAN, such as OpenText, IBM, Loren Data Systems, and SPS Commerce, and many others. The VANs utilize mailbagging to confirm the receiving VAN acknowledges receipt.
We offer competitive pricing as well as fixed-rate packages (unheard of in the industry). To get pricing, contact us today.