Users caught in middle of VAN spat

Computerworld - A nasty spitting match between rival e-commerce value-added networks (VAN) has corporate users crying foul and worrying about the long-term status of their online links to supply chain partners.
Dublin, Ohio-based Sterling Commerce Inc. last week confirmed that it plans to terminate its VAN interconnect with New York-based Internet Commerce Corp. (ICC), effective today. Sterling's move follows a decision in September by market leader GE Global Exchange Services Inc. (GXS) to disconnect its VAN from the one run by ICC.
Users need interconnects between different e-commerce networks to process business transactions via electronic data interchange (EDI) transmissions with suppliers and customers that subscribe to other VANs. ICC said its network has more than 1,000 users.
Neither Sterling nor Gaithersburg, Md.-based GXS has said why it cut off ICC. GXS said only that it acted for "business reasons," while Sterling declined to comment.
For now, ICC customers can get around the disconnects by having their EDI traffic routed to Sterling and GXS users through intermediary links. Charlie Townsend, chief technology officer at New York-based Randa Corp., said the men's neckwear maker will be able to send data to business partners on Sterling's network via IBM's VAN at no extra cost, with ICC picking up the tab.
"There's always more than one way to skin a cat, and maybe these bigger [VANs] will discover they're not as important as they thought they were," he said. "If this was a power play, it didn't work."
But Ken Vollmer, an analyst at Giga Information Group Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., said ICC may not be able to absorb the extra fees indefinitely. "They can only afford to eat those charges for so long," he said.
Gregory Onjack, data interchange e-commerce administrator at Mack Trucks Inc. in Allentown, Pa., said VAN users need assurances that they won't be subject to these kinds of unexpected changes. He pointed out that telecommunications firms can't randomly disconnect from one another.
Onjack said Mack Trucks has 200 suppliers on Sterling's network and more than 350 on GXS's VAN. Mack used to be a GXS customer, but he said it switched early last year because ICC's prices were 70% lower than the $20,000-plus monthly fee it paid to GXS.
Now, Onjack said, both GXS and Sterling have offered to meet ICC's price if Mack shifts to their networks. "To me, this is a terrible business practice," he said. "I call it price fixing."
Russell Stultz, president and CEO of Wordware Publishing Inc. in Plano, Texas, said that he also was contacted