As discussed in numerous earlier blogs the automotive industry is truly global in nature and the industry is constantly on the hunt for the next low cost region to build a plant in. China has been the number one location for inward investment by the automotive industry over the past decade.? However rising wage rises and strikes in China are leading companies to invest in other locations such as Mexico, Brazil, Thailand and Vietnam.? There have been countless press releases in recent weeks relating to car manufacturers and their suppliers establishing plants in these afore mentioned countries.
In addition to looking for the next big low cost region, manufacturers across all industry sectors are now starting to spread the risk to protect their production capacity, in fact car manufacturers in particular are having to adapt to survive otherwise they face the prospect of losing significant days of production should a plant be impacted by a natural disaster for example. Earthquakes, tsunamis and other forms of supply chain disruption is causing many companies to rethink both manufacturing and sourcing location strategies.
So you might be asking where B2B fits into this? Well I guess that the above two situation have occurred over the past two years in particular and it seems strange that at the very same time that this has happened, CIOs around the world were starting to evaluate the next big technological trend to hit the enterprise, cloud computing.
You see cloud computing offers some unique benefits to companies who need to globalise their operations?and more importantly?protect their manufacturing capacity.
However if a company implements a global cloud platform to support their ever growing operations, what is the best way of connecting a remote plant or design office to the cloud? Ladies and gentlemen please let me introduce you to what I believe will become not only a global communications standard in the automotive industry but a standard way to exchange information to cloud based environments of the future, OFTP2! One of the first blogs that I posted this year was related to OFTP2, CLICK HERE, and in this particuar blog I explained why I thought OFTP2 adoption would significantly increase during 2012.? Today, it is not only increasing but for the reasons I explained earlier I believe it is on the verge of going global.
There is a growing demand and interest to introduce one global automotive communications standard, but I firmly believe that a suitable standard is already here and has been in use by many European based automotive companies for more than three years now. The European organisation ODETTE originally came up with the widely used communications standard OFTP in 1986. OFTP2 however is an attempt to build a communications standard, from the ground up that would offer a number of key features to allow global automotive companies to be able to exchange business? information anywhere in the world. OFTP2 has essentially brought B2B communications kicking and screaming into the 21st century. It is also quite timely that cloud based environments have become increasingly popular at the same time that OFTP2 was being introduced to the market.
So why should the automotive industry take an interest in OFTP2?, what unique features does it offer to global car companies and their suppliers? and why should industry bodies work together to try and promote OFTP2 as the global communications standard for cloud based environments?? Well let me try and explain:
- OFTP2 is Internet Based - first and foremost OFTP2 was designed from the ground up to be used across the public Internet. Traditionally, in addition to the B2B network or VAN providers, car manufacturers have used regional networks such as ANX, ENX and JNX for business to business communications as this was the only real way to exchange files, particularly large files securely between companies. However as plants have expanded outside of these regional networks, so companies need a way to exchange information outside these private networks as well. The Internet provides the ideal medium for this purpose and OFTP2 supports internet based communications.
- OFTP2 is Easy to Deploy - OFTP2 can be deployed in a number of ways, depending on the internal ICT capabilities of the company concerned. Traditionally, B2B vendors have offered OFTP2 software however what if you need to connect trading partners really quickly and suppliers do not have the internal ICT infrastructure or resources to deploy their own OFTP2 solution? At GXS we offer an outsourced OFTP2 service whereby we will take care of ensuring that information you need to send to a customer is sent via OFTP2. We have many companies in the retail sector using our outsourced AS2 service, and our outsourced OFTP2 service is no different, we simply remove this complexity away from your own infrastructure.
- OFTP2 Handles Large File Transfer with Ease ? Decentralisation of design departments has led automotive companies needing to find a way to exchange engineering related files quickly and securely anywhere in the world.? OFTP2 offers a number of features such as file compression and check point restart to ensure that large files get from one location to another with ease. The likely increase in cloud based storage and archiving environments will increase the demand for web based large file communications still further.
- OFTP2 is Secure ? one of the major concerns over the years has been security, which is why companies have stuck with using the regional networks that I mentioned earlier.? Car companies were extremely concerned about the security of their design information for example and there was a perception that the Internet was not secure. As highlighted earlier, OFTP2 has been designed from the ground up to operate securely across the internet and in fact includes three levels of security to prove the point.? Firstly the files can be encrypted, secondly the transmission tunnel can be secured and thirdly the users at each end can be asked to exchange digital certificates in order to ensure that sensitive information is only opened by the correct user.? Therefore three levels of security would seem to address many of the traditional concerns about sending information across the public Internet. More importantly companies can choose the security level that they would like to deploy, either, first, second or third levels as described earlier.
- OFTP2 is Already Proven ? finally and more importantly no company likes to be the first to try something new, especially if unproven in the market. Well OFTP2 has been around for more than three years now and it?is widely used by many leading EMEA auto companies such as VW, Volvo and Hella?to name but a few. So if OFTP2 is good enough for these companies to use on global basis what is stopping automotive companies in other regions from adopting OFTP2, put simply nothing!
CIOs around the world are being asked to look at how cloud environments can benefit their operations or enterprise and what I have tried to outline in this blog is that OFTP2 is here now and being used by some of the largest car companies in the world. So what are you waiting for, if you need to send information to your cloud platform from anywhere in the world, then OFTP2 will provide the missing communications link. For more information on OFTP2 take a look at the ODETTE website.
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