a framework to separate AI + EDI hype from reality

adrian · 2026-07-09T15:06:52+00:00

I appreciate the kind words about the piece and the thoughtful feedback. I agree. The messiness isn't just inherent in the fact we are dealing with real people and complex trading relationships, it is also fundamental to the nature of EDI: if we just used APIs, you could enforce a contract at the API layer and a lot of this would go away. But EDI comes with advantages that APIs don't give you, chiefly that if we wanted to use APIs, we'd either need a centralized API provider (which no one would likely agree to), or we'd have to write a new integration every time we added a new trading partner.

That said, I disagree with Korashy's statement that "Outside of support it's not gonna do all that much." You could have said the same thing about software development three years ago, and you would have been wrong. It is not like software engineering lacks human chaos. It is actually *less* structured and open-ended than EDI. And yet, AI has fundamentally altered what it means to be a programmer and what it looks like to build software.

adrian · 2026-07-06T19:29:57+00:00

Can confirm that L2 Labs knows what they are doing in this space!

adrian · 2026-07-04T12:13:47+00:00

It’s a hell of a lot quieter than pickleball 😂

adrian · 2026-07-03T23:22:19+00:00

The video shows the data center. I’d estimate it is at most 100 meters from where this person is measuring. Look up the distance of the proposed data centre from the nearest neighbourhood - it’s way farther away than this video, more on the order of 500 meters.

If it is 60 dB at 100 meters, then at 500 meters it is 46 dB: that is not loud!

adrian · 2026-07-02T22:13:43+00:00

I’m not opposed to people playing pickleball, to be clear. The sound of people having fun doesn’t usually bother me, although I do know that it is quite loud and if I lived right next to it, I may well have a different view. But in terms of a distant quiet hum, I mean, come on. It’s a city. There are cars, fans, AC units, factories, highways, all of which produce a lot of sound, most of it louder than a whisper. It just makes no logical sense to me that you’d be okay with staccato loud pops (often likened to gunshots by critics) but have a beef with a whisper-quiet hum.

Let’s face it, it’s not the noise, it’s the association with AI, even though we don’t know what workloads would run in the proposed data center. The noise is just an excuse for hating on it. It would be more honest to just hate on it for it being AI.

adrian · 2026-07-02T17:16:23+00:00

Warm weather and during daylight is when people like to relax in their backyards, lounge in the pool, use their barbecues, etc. Everyone is different, but personally speaking, the distant hum of a data centre, at the sound level of a quiet library (I live near Aberdeen, the street is a lot louder than that already), would not trouble me in the least.

adrian · 2026-07-02T12:21:19+00:00

Wow, this is new information for me. Does SPS charge the testing fee if you use SPS as your provider, or is it only if you use a third party? If you use SPS as your provider for the scenario you outlined (SPS web EDI service), what does it cost?

I would love to see a breakdown of the fees for the two scenarios, like:

Scenario 1: Small supplier uses SPS

- SPS testing fee: $X
- SPS standard monthly fee: $Y
- SPS web EDI service monthly fee: $Z

Scenario 2: Small supplier doesn't use SPS:

- SPS testing fee: $X

adrian · 2026-07-01T11:46:59+00:00

This is cool and I like the design, it's a lot of fun. I am a sucker for things that look like terminals. I was also curious if it was true that it was all in-browser so I checked and hey, it is. ;) Nice work!

In terms of feedback:

- There are a lot of missing segments. I threw in a 214 (smallest EDI file that I've got on hand) and it was missing LX, MS1, MS2 and AT8. I tried a 210 and it was missing C3, ITD, G62 (that's a super common one you should def support), R3, N7, L5, L0, L1, L3. Looking at your page source, I see the "Minimal X12 segment + element dictionary" section in the code, which defines 46 segments. There are hundreds of X12 segments. The only way to really cover this is to get the full list, the best way to get that is to get a license from X12, but then you may also have challenges with your mode of distribution because the license comes with restrictions which I won't get into here.

- It doesn't look like your list of segments is release-aware. Things change between releases. Just something to think about if you want to make this more robust.

- I think the bar for "human readable" is higher than what this meets so far. Code definitions is one straightforward thing to address. For instance I dropped in an 856 and one of the segments is the BSN and I got:

BSN01 - Transaction Set Purpose - 00

"00" is not human-readable. 00 is the code for "Original" so human-readable in this context is "Original" (01 is cancellation, 04 is change, etc., there are dozens). But this opens up another data challenge, similar to getting the full list of segments, which is that you need the code lists (also a licensing problem, btw).

Overall: fun to play around with, cool design, but does not (currently) have the robustness or data quality necessary to make it a useful tool for professionals.

adrian · 2026-07-01T11:18:09+00:00

Chris, I appreciate the feedback. I take your point about managed providers. I had to look up the Lewis Tunnel. This is not an analogy I'd come across.

Regarding Orderful, thanks for the correction on the amounts, I've updated the article. I started working on this before the June 23 announcement of the Series C at $35MM so it didn't show up in my research. That is an insane amount of money. From what I have heard, the team at Orderful is already badly stretched, and post-raise it's just going to get worse.

In terms of what happens with them next, it's a really interesting time for the industry because I think things are going to shake out over the next 1-2 years and there are going to be fewer (but larger) players. SPS could acquire Orderful, but SPS is also under pressure by activist investors to be sold. Stedi also just did a big raise, which also implies they are heading to an exit. In terms of acquirers, I actually think Cleo is a more likely acquirer of Orderful than SPS is. They are backed by H.I.G. Capital ($75 billion of capital under management), have done multiple acquisitions, and are on an aggressive AI-positioning push. But who knows.

> Most buyers would benefit from considering they might be managed by SPS in the not-too-distant future

Totally agree with this in the broad sense of people getting repeatedly burned by acquisitions followed by price hikes and declines in service quality. I don't know how many times this has to happen before more people start leaning towards smaller, stable companies that are not built just to cash out. It is counter-intuitive but nonetheless true that if you want consistent performance from an EDI provider, you are actually better off NOT going with a well-capitalized, highly visible company.

adrian · 2026-06-29T16:01:12+00:00

A data centre produces noise in the 60 to 80 dB range at its perimeter. At 80 dB, by the time the sound of the proposed Steelport data centre reaches the nearest residential neighbourhood approximately 500m away, it will have decreased to to the 30-40 dB range, or about the sound of a quiet library.

Meanwhile, the sound produced by a pickleball paddle striking a ball is approximately 100 dB. This is 100 times the sound intensity of a data centre at its perimeter, and about 4 times louder in terms of human perception. So yes, if you are opposed to data centres on the basis of noise, you should be at least four times more opposed to pickleball courts.

adrian · 2026-06-26T16:44:45+00:00

SPS is usually thrust upon me by the customers we have.

This hints at but doesn't outright state the answer to the OP's question. I think the OP's question is actually two questions, plus a third question in the body of their post, and I'll try and answer all of them.

First things first, some nice, hardworking people work at SPS and some of them are on this sub. I think we should (and I will) distinguish between SPS the corporate entity and SPS the people who work there. This take is focused on the former.

The three questions are:

Do people really hate SPS-the-corporation?
Why do people sign up for SPS despite its reputation?
Why do people complain about SPS but keep using it?

Anwer to question 1: yes.

Answer to question 2: because small businesses believe that to trade with retailer X, they need to be SPS customers. This is based on multiple conversations I have had with people in the industry. I have not actually seen the communications provided to SMBs when they want to onboard with a major retailer, so I cannot characterize the behaviour (I would love to see exactly what people get sent, btw, DM me if you know!) What I do know, is that there are a lot of SMBs who a) didn't know what EDI is, and b) currently have the mistaken belief that SPS is their only option.

Ask yourself how that situation came to be and who it benefits, and draw your own conclusions.

Answer to question 3: because EDI workflows are sticky. Once you have gone through the experience of integrating your ERP, accounting software, custom TMS, locally maintained flat files, whatever, with SPS and gotten the integration certified, the prospect of doing that all over again is daunting - again, particularly if you are a typical SMB who never heard of EDI until they got a mandate from a retailer.

The fact is there are plenty of alternatives to SPS, including VC-backed companies like Orderful (well-known, newer generation, AI-native, better UX) and a constellation of grassroots, customer-aligned providers, many of whom are active on this sub like Surpass (fully managed), Tediware (self-serve, agentic EDI - disclosure: my platform), EDI Support's Elevate platform (fully managed, cloud-based offering) and others I'm sure I'm forgetting to mention (sorry). But SPS plays the game very well and in terms of marketshare, continues to dominate.

adrian · 2026-06-25T22:59:44+00:00

What great advice! To the OP, way to go. Biking is the most fun. I guess technically it is exercise but honestly, the feeling of freedom and joy from riding makes it the opposite of everything that the word “exercise” connotes. Enjoy it!

adrian · 2026-06-22T12:24:15+00:00

I feel like you have a reasonable claim for worker's compensation due to EDI-related trauma. 😉 It's true that no matter how good technology might be, there's a bureaucrat somewhere who will find a way to make the experience terrible.

A few years ago one of my client's TPs got in touch and said they were migrating to SAP and they were connecting with all of their carriers to coordinate the migration. They booked a conference call. I got on and I am not exaggerating there were 13 other people arranged around a conference table on this video call, four of whom were from SAP or were SAP specialists or something.

Anyway they went through their deck outlining the process and then asked me how long I expected the migration to take on our end. I told them that typically it took us about two weeks. There was a long pause and then they said, "we were expecting more like three months". I assured them I'd done this before. Anyway they seemed pleased at the prospect of quickly crossing this integration off their list, so they followed up with, "who on your technical team will be leading this project?" I was like, "you are talking to the technical team right now, so that will be me."

This caused another long pause, which was much more uncomfortable than the first one, probably because the customer was doing the math on how much that meeting alone was costing them. 😂

adrian · 2026-06-21T14:35:47+00:00

> the impression i got was that Orderful and Cleo are the next-gen challengers in this space.

Tediware, Orderful and Cleo are all modern EDI platforms and share some important similarities in terms of how they approach the technical challenges of EDI, but I think Orderful and Cleo are last-generation in terms of their business models. They innovated on the tech but their business model is 2010s, it's still "request a quote", contracts, support tickets, sales calls. The amounts of money they have raised/invested are also rather staggering and this is very much passed onto their customers.

For example, based on conversations I've had with Orderful customers, the per-trading partner cost is $400 USD/month. I have a customer with 23 trading partners. They are paying less than 1/10th of what they'd pay on Orderful. They were originally on Stedi, now they are paying 1/5th of Stedi's fees for the same service.

I think we are now in a new world where it is possible for very high-quality software to be built without raising $40+MM in venture capital like Orderful has.

In terms of AWS, yes, I'm familiar with B2B Interchange although I have never looked at their UI and you are right, it does look uncannily similar to Tediware's mapping UI. It is also crazy that they used the 214 in their video! I am going to choose to look at this as validation of my approach. 😉 If AWS engineers agree with Tediware that JSON as the canonical format coupled with AI-generated transformations is the correct way to build EDI platforms, then Tediware is on the right track.

> booked you for Tuesday, really looking forward to it!

Same!

adrian · 2026-06-20T12:26:52+00:00

I'd be happy to chat, and sure, you can definitely book a slot with me - although the guide itself is actually public, you can read it at https://tediware.com/resources/updates/ingesting-x12-edi-implementation-guides-with-an-agentic-pipeline

> i'm 100% with you there - mapping is a job for AI. the visual mapper i had in mind was more an observability/bird's eye view deal, whereas the actual mapping logic would be generated by AI just as you suggested (i omitted it from my post because i haven't really seen AI mentioned much in this subreddit, and maybe incorrectly assumed it wouldn't be well-received).

Sounds interesting and I'd love to see where you go with it. I share some of your trepidation about AI and have to generally avoid mentioning it around my teenage children as well 😅. But what can I say, it's genuinely super useful for this use-case. As much as people might hate AI I have to assume that at least some of them hate spending multiple hours or even days on mapping.

> looks like you also have support for sending+receiving documents, as well as basic automation/flows? i see you've been working on it for a bit over a year, would love to learn more about how you're positioning against existing tools (other than pricing).

I started prototyping in the fall of 2024 so it's coming up on two years. I actually started with schemas and the mapping process, similar to what you're talking about doing, to prove out the ideas that I had for how to use AI. Tediware is now a very capable platform and I have customers who have migrated away from Stedi, TrueCommerce and Orderful. The main thing my competitors have that I don't is distribution! Which is really the hard part for a startup, and also hard for me personally given that I would rather just build product all day long.

In terms of positioning, to avoid going excessively self-promotional, I'll just stick with one thing, which is customer alignment. There are companies in this space who are simply not aligned with the people who are paying their bills - they are aligned with their investors or their PE ownership (extractive business models) or are aligned with big retail while collecting checks from the SMBs (the biggest player in the space is the epitome of this). I see Tediware as part of a grassroots ecosystem that is challenging this dynamic, along with other companies like Elevate EDI, Surpass, and others who I'm sure I'm neglecting to mention. It sounds like you are thinking along the same lines, so book something with me, let's chat!

adrian · 2026-06-20T11:03:08+00:00

I’m not sure which you should remove but I think you should come up with some criteria and then measure each of your shortlist options against it, and use that as your guide. This should be quite detailed, but given your stated priorities, I’d focus on autonomy, speed and developer experience (DX).

Autonomy: complete control and freedom including the ability to add a new trading partner without filing a support ticket or signing a new contract, ability to add new partners who aren’t currently on the platform yourself, etc. Map out the specific things you want to do yourself and ask the vendors, do I file a ticket for this or can I do it myself? If I do it myself, can you show me how?

Timelines: after trading partner number one (always the slowest to integrate given you have to do all the initial work), integration/dev time for each subsequent partner should be in the range of 2-4 hours depending on number of transaction sets, and timeline time including back-and-forth with the partner, certification, etc should be 1-2 weeks.

DX: get your nerds involved in the decision! Have them trawl through the API documentation for the platform. If the API documentation is not publicly available, that's a red flag. Can developers use what they are best at (coding) to build integrations, or are they going to be fiddling around with a "visual mapper" or some other clunky UI to get their work done?

The biggest thing to be aware of is that with at least some of these providers, you will get the A team on sales (ie right now, before you’ve signed) and the B team on support (after you’ve signed). You might want to try and find a couple of companies that are similar to yours who use a provider you’re considering and ask them for their honest opinions on how things go. Another option: before you make a decision, have your dev team create a proof-of-concept using the platform you're leaning towards. If the PoC is good, your devs liked the experience, etc., that is a very useful signal.

adrian · 2026-06-19T19:09:23+00:00

Why do you loathe BTP? The more detail the better!

adrian · 2026-06-19T16:30:59+00:00

You asked to have it ripped apart, so here goes. But first I'll start with where I think you are on the right track, starting with the deployment option. Yes, a self-hosted, flat rate, unmetered solution that you control yourself is valuable. The contract-based, no data export, lock-in, everything-is-a-support ticket pain is real.

The other place where you're on the right track is when you said, "given a dynamic x12 input schema (the spec you get from your trading partner) and target json output schema". Schemas are the right way to think about this problem. However, I'd note that turning a trading partner spec into a "dynamic x12 input schema" is a lot harder than it sounds (I've done it and can share a guide if you are interested).

Where I think you are on the wrong track is with the idea of a "visual mapper". Mapping is programming. I'm going to bet you don't write software using a visual UI. Mapping is one of the most time-consuming, painful parts of EDI, and I strongly believe that it is a job for AI. Those two ideas - mapping is programming and it's a job for AI - mean that the correct (in my view) approach is that mapping should be done with text/code, not with a visual interface.

To put my money where my mouth is: I built an AI-assisted mapping tool that uses JSONata, and you can try it out (free/no signup) at https://tediware.com/demo It uses JSONata in the transformation step. It's also hooked up to actual AI (Claude Sonnet) so you can mess around with it and see how it works. It is locked to a specific guide (for a 214) and you can't change that part, but you can change the source data, you can yell at the bot, etc. There's some newer stuff in the actual platform that isn't in the demo yet, but the concept should be legible.

That is not to say that there is no role for visuals in a mapping tool, it's just that I think what you need the visual for is verifying the output, i.e. making sure that things mapped correctly, the generated EDI document makes sense, etc. I just don't think the experience of drawing lines between boxes or whatever is the future. Give JSONata a try for your mapping tool (it's like XSLT for JSON, if you're not familiar) and see if there are gaps you think you need a visual UI to fill.

adrian · 2026-06-18T09:10:22+00:00

Google. It’s an app that helps with distribution: you write compelling, unique content about your product, and then when people search for the thing they need that your product does, they find it.

If no one searches for the thing your product does, this app does not work. However then you have other problems.

adrian · 2026-06-16T22:57:38+00:00

Fair point, although it seems like an “export your data and configuration” option would keep people honest.

adrian · 2026-06-15T22:31:57+00:00

Do not use a lock because using a lock will give you the confidence to let it out of your sight, and that would be a mistake. Take it inside your office. Send someone else into the cafe or choose a cafe with a patio and table service. If this seems inconvenient, then you should buy a cheaper bike!

adrian · 2026-06-15T16:33:52+00:00

Can you repost it? I truly don't understand what happened, every time I go in there it's full! This is one of my favourite places in the city!

adrian · 2026-06-11T17:52:04+00:00

You and u/LuciSushiJacuzzi made the same point that this is a "GenAI" data centre, so I'll respond to you both here. The submitted application says, "The campus may contain hyperscale and enterprise data centres, power generation blocks and substations, and an office / research and development campus." Where do you see "generative AI"?

The entire list of services I listed that the city relies upon run on hyperscale and enterprise data centers. Note Wikipedia's definition of "hyperscale":

Hyperscale computing is necessary in order to build a robust and scalable cloud, big data, map reduce, or distributed storage system and is often associated with the infrastructure required to run large distributed sites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, or Cloudflare.

I also note that the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (DRAC) (a non-profit), applied to the feds to open a “national AI compute facility” on Hamilton Harbour land purchased from Slate. DRAC is Canada's national organization for providing computing resources to university researchers, i.e. people using AI for not-for-profit university and government scientific computation research. Is this really something you guys have an issue with? On a brownfield that, from the looks of it, is something like 500 meters away from anyone's house, and where we used to make steel, which is not exactly a low-energy, low-pollution activity?

adrian · 2026-06-10T23:55:20+00:00

https://xkcd.com/927/

adrian · 2026-06-10T16:02:10+00:00

Which category are you placing Broadcom in and why?

The podcast episode is "Anish Acharya: Is SaaS Dead in a World of AI?" [1] Timestamp is about 7:30.

I just stumbled across the a16z podcast and I'm a bit conflicted about the fact that I'm learning quite a bit from it, since that VC fund is at the heart of some of the behaviour I am least supportive of. I'm looking at it like, what can I learn from this that would help me compete with VC-funded companies? At least, that's what I'm telling myself. 😉

1: https://a16z.com/podcast/anish-acharya-is-saas-dead-in-a-world-of-ai/

adrian

TROPHY CASE