GSW vs GIS/SI

GSW and GIS: If your using GSW your easiest upgrade (specially if you have a lot of maps) by far is Sterling Integrator (aka GIS). As you know GSW is an EDI specific application that is designed to take any data format and convert it to EDI and vice versa. And because it is very specific to EDI and it is a much older, time tested product, you will find GSW to be considerably more mature at what it does (EDI). SI (aka GIS) is what they call an EAI or "Enterprise application integration". An EAI (according to Wikipedia) is "An integration framework composed of a collection of technologies and services which form a middleware to enable integration of systems and applications across the enterprise.", loosely translated you can use an EAI to tie together your accounting to your inventory management just as easily as you could receive an 850 purchase order, translate it and move it into your order management system (said Tongue-in-cheek). The upside is that all your GSW maps should port right over unless you have some extensive user exits.

Personal Note: I generally liken the comparison between GSW and SI as that between a good pickup and a Mach Truck. I can buy a pickup today and start hauling stuff from Home Depot almost instantly, which is pretty much the same with GSW; however, not so simple with the Mach, I still need to outfit it with an appropriate trailer and equipment. That said a well appointed Mach can out haul a pickup almost 10 to 1, this is also true of a well appointed SI system. Also a normal pickup is about 1/3 the size of a setup Mach, which is an ironic number because 1/3 just about says everything else you need to know when comparing the two.

GSW has about 1/3 the features of SI.

GSW is about 1/3 the price of SI .

GSW has about 1/3 the setup time of SI.

GSW takes 1/3 the training time and cost of SI.

Lastly projects under GSW generally take 1/3 the implementation time of SI.

Final note, if your shopping for a translator and all your planning to do with the application is receiving a data file from a trading partner and port it over to your accounting system; do yourself and other employees a favor and stick to GSW, there are a lot of thing you can do to cleanup and streamline your processes. However, if your an IT manager looking to standardize all those little applications that run your entire organization onto one standard development language and framework, to include all your EDI processes; then SI is definitely your baby.