a brief look at the electronic mail marketplace. implementation did. The U.K. EDI marketplace, as the E-mail before it, is now taking E-mail has had one characteristic which has made a significant advantage of the second generation of thinking. Premises based difference to its development. Whilst EDI is primarily used for inter software is now being produced to move the processing off net, with company communication E-mail has tended to be intra company. the resulting requirement for a simpler value added service and a Therefore the early E-mail marketplace showed a host of proprie- corresponding cheaper and simpler pricing structure from the ser- tary systems, often incompatible. As companies sought to combine vice providers (Figures 38.1 and 38.2) internal systems a standard was required and X.400 was born. The network also provides extra delivery mechanisms, both in The U.S. EDI marketplace initially followed a different standard terms of the devices which may be used and the protocols used to to Europe, ANSI X12 instead of EDIFACT. However a larger reach them. number of messages were defined in ANSI X12 and the existence These changes enable smaller players to enter the market, extend- of these messages enabled a different solution. More generalised ing the accessibility of EDI to the next tranche of customers who premises based software was possible and the marketplace which were previously priced out. evolved reflected this. The value added by the network was less, the The connectivity, translation and other services are achieved by off net processing correspondingly higher. means of gateways on the service. Each gateway provides a specific However for E-mail there was little difference in the standards service. This means that a new service can be easily added or revised U.K. to U.S. SO the same profile evolved, i.e. a large number of SO that as a standard emerges in a particular area the gateway can be proprietary systems. The market for E-mail on both continents is enhanced to meet the protocol requireme