The Order Network eXchange Revolution: How onX Unifies EDI-API Integration and Enables AI-Powered Supply Chain Operations in 2026

Your EDI systems work well for structured partners and predictable order flows. But orders now originate from everywhere, including marketplaces, social platforms, and AI-powered assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. This distribution creates a problem most EDI managers recognize but don't discuss enough: the infrastructure behind those orders still relies on brittle, point-to-point integrations built for a store-centric era.

The Commerce Operations Crisis That Created onX

Here's what happens when an AI agent places an order through your existing systems. The agent captures purchase intent and processes payment smoothly. Then your operations team discovers the order needs manual intervention to move through fulfillment. Why? Most selling channels can't access real-time inventory data or send accurate updates back to fulfillment systems.

This fragmentation gets worse at scale. Every brand, platform, and 3PL uses different schemas for orders, inventory, and fulfillment. The result is broken handoffs, manual work, and slower change. Your team builds custom adapters for each new channel, multiplying technical debt faster than you can reduce it.

The infrastructure gap affects TMS platforms too. Systems like Cargoson, MercuryGate, and Blue Yonder need unified integration approaches to handle the increasing complexity of multi-channel fulfillment. Without standardized data flows, each new channel requires additional mapping and configuration work.

What Is the Order Network eXchange (onX) and Why It Matters

Built as the first open standard unifying how commerce systems communicate - from AI-powered selling channels through payments, logistics, and fulfillment - onX addresses a critical missing layer in the agentic commerce stack. The Commerce Operations Foundation is a vendor-neutral, nonprofit organization dedicated to unifying commerce operations through open standards. Its first specification, onX (Order Network eXchange), establishes a common framework for how orders, inventory, and fulfillment data move across systems.

The technical foundation matters for implementation planning. Built on the Model Context Protocol, it gives AI agents a single interface to commerce operations. Instead of maintaining separate APIs for each fulfillment partner, you configure one standardized interface that works across your entire ecosystem.

This approach benefits TMS vendors including Cargoson alongside Manhattan Active and Oracle TM. By aligning merchants, logistics providers, and fulfillment leaders around a shared framework, onX helps commerce move faster, smarter, and with greater confidence.

The Major Players Behind onX and Industry Adoption

The founding members signal serious industry commitment. Vendors and brands representing over $1 trillion in GMV - including Manhattan Associates, IBM Sterling, Pipe17, SPS Commerce, Radial, Ryder, Barrett Distribution, Allbirds, Ipsy, commercetools, and Commerce plus 62 other vendors and brands - unite to create a faster, smarter, and more connected flow of orders for the agentic commerce era. The Commerce Operations Foundation is a nonprofit standards organization founded by leaders across technology, logistics, retail, and commerce infrastructure, including Manhattan Associates, IBM Sterling, SPS Commerce, Radial, Ryder, Barrett, Allbirds, Ipsy, commercetools, Commerce (BigCommerce & Feedonomics) and Pipe17, and others totaling 62 backing vendors and brands. Together, these members represent a broad cross-section of the global commerce ecosystem, powering more than a trillion dollars in annual gross merchandise value.

These companies understand the network effects. The Foundation was designed to be neutral by nature. No single vendor can dominate the flow of commerce. It's an open standard built for everyone who touches an order. This governance model follows successful precedents like W3C for web standards and SWIFT for financial messaging.

For the TMS ecosystem, this includes platforms like Cargoson positioned alongside these established players as the standard gains traction across logistics providers.

SPS Commerce's Strategic Investment in onX

SPS Commerce's participation carries particular weight. The company is also aligning itself with broader industry efforts by joining the Commerce Operations Foundation as a founding member and supporting the launch of the Order Network eXchange, or onX. Their retail network handles massive transaction volumes, making their backing crucial for adoption.

SPS Commerce positions AI as the future operating system for commerce, emphasizing the critical need for clean, shared, and standardized data across trading partners to orchestrate inventory, forecasting, and fulfillment. This aligns with onX's goal of creating that shared operational language.

Technical Implementation: How onX Changes EDI-API Integration Strategy

Implementation starts with understanding the adapter pattern. The agent makes one get_inventory call using standardized input. The adapter translates to the system's specific API. The agent receives consistent data regardless of source. You maintain existing system connections while adding the onX interface layer.

Because onX is open source and community-governed, AI developers build against a stable specification without vendor dependencies. For production environments requiring predictable interfaces and guaranteed data structures, standards eliminate complexity.

For TMS platforms like Cargoson, SAP TM, and Transporeon, this means building onX adapters that expose transportation management capabilities through the standard interface. Every system – from ERPs and OMSs to 3PLs and AI agents – can use this shared model to capture, fulfill, and reconcile orders in real time.

Migration strategy depends on your current setup. You can implement onX adapters alongside existing EDI connections, gradually shifting traffic as partners adopt the standard. At Pipe17, we're currently evolving our MCP server to use onX as the foundation. We'll host our own onX implementation with a Pipe17 adapter, and plan to open-source our adapter as a reference onX implementation for other companies.

The AI and Automation Advantage: Beyond Traditional EDI

A unified agentic AI standard gives commerce systems a shared language. By aligning how we express order actions and inventory availability, we can create a frictionless, composable network across OMS, WMS, carriers, and last-mile providers. This enables automation scenarios impossible with point-to-point EDI.

Consider autonomous exception handling. When inventory becomes unavailable, an AI agent can query alternative suppliers through the same onX interface, automatically reroute orders, and update customers - all without human intervention. onX provides the foundation that makes agentic commerce practical. A ChatGPT plugin, Claude integration, Gemini CLI, or Pippen agent can use standard protocols to turn a captured order into a successful delivery.

Modern TMS solutions benefit from these AI capabilities. Systems like Cargoson can leverage onX to enable intelligent routing decisions based on real-time order data and fulfillment constraints.

Implementation Roadmap: Getting Started with onX in Your Organization

Start with an assessment of your current integration architecture. Map existing API endpoints and EDI transactions to identify which processes would benefit most from standardization. Focus on high-volume, error-prone integrations first.

Phase your implementation:

• Evaluate onX against your current partner requirements
• Identify pilot partners willing to test the standard
• Build adapters for your existing systems
• Test with limited transaction volumes
• Scale based on performance and partner adoption

ROI calculation should include reduced custom integration costs, faster partner onboarding, and improved error handling. Global retail ecommerce sales exceeded $6 trillion in 2024 and will surpass $7 trillion by 2027. B2B ecommerce grew 10.5% year-over-year to reach $2.3 trillion. Mobile commerce accounted for $2.07 trillion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $3.35 trillion by 2028. The volume growth makes standardization increasingly valuable.

TMS selection decisions should consider onX readiness. Platforms like Cargoson, nShift, and others that invest in standards adoption will provide better long-term integration flexibility.

Future Impact: What onX Means for Supply Chain Integration in 2026

AI has made buying effortless. Now we need to make fulfillment intelligent. Our goal is to build commerce infrastructure that's as adaptive and connected as the AI shaping demand. The onX standard gives the industry a common operational language so orders can move with precision, transparency, and at the speed of AI.

The competitive advantage becomes clear when you consider partner onboarding velocity. Instead of months-long integration projects, onX-compliant systems can connect in days. The window for establishing order operations standards is narrow. Once fragmentation reaches critical mass at the AI layer, coordination becomes nearly impossible.

For TMS vendors including Cargoson, early onX adoption creates differentiation as customers prioritize standards-based integration capabilities. Just as USB-C standardized physical connectivity, onX standardizes the digital connections between commerce systems, creating the same plug-and-play reliability that AI and automation already expect.

The long-term impact extends beyond cost reduction. When your systems speak the same language as AI agents, you enable new business models and operational capabilities that weren't practical with traditional EDI approaches. As a result, the Commerce Operations Foundation's onX establishes a unified framework for brands, platforms, and logistics providers to facilitate commerce operations.

Start evaluating onX now. The standard specification is publicly available, and early implementation will position your organization ahead of the adoption curve. Your EDI expertise remains valuable, but onX gives you the bridge to AI-powered commerce operations that traditional standards can't provide.