For companies who prefer to retain control of their EDI environment, rather than outsourcing the management of their EDI infrastructure or using hosted EDI solutions, implementing EDI software on a network of PCs behind a company firewall will be the preferred option to take.
Implementing EDI software assumes that a company has the correct internal resources to be able to implement the EDI software and maintain on an ongoing basis. Implementing EDI software will require resources that can understand how to map between different document types, how to on board or connect to trading partners and possibly provide integration to other business applications such as accounting packages or ERP software.
Once the software has been installed then the IT resources will be required to maintain the EDI software on an ongoing basis, this will include upgrading the software environment as and when required.
Many companies, especially smaller sized businesses, may not have the internal IT resources to manage their own EDI environment and for this reason they will choose to use hosted or Software as a Service based EDI offerings instead.