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There are lots of companies hawking network services that help businesses exchange vital transaction data with suppliers and trading partners. However, startup Slam Dunk Networks Inc. says it's offering a more-reliable and less-expensive service.

With a secure, redundant overlay network that uses the Internet as its foundation, Slam Dunk's service gives customers guaranteed delivery and tracking of transaction messages.

The service is a viable option to value-added networks that rely on electronic data interchange, says Lisa Williams, an analyst at the Yankee Group. The cost of an EDI network can be substantial, she says, because transaction fees can be as high as 38 cents for every kilobyte of data, on top of $5,000 to $50,000 in up-front costs.

The Slam Dunk service "is a way to piggyback some automation and security on a technology that most people have, namely E-mail," Williams says. "It's a good, fast, simple solution for something that's been a problem for a long time." The problem: connecting to smaller trading partners or suppliers that can't afford a connection to an EDI network or are in an area where it's impossible to connect to an EDI provider, Williams says.

Using software that sits at the customer's site, the service encodes the transaction message and creates a duplicate. The original and the duplicate are sent on separate paths across the Internet to a recipient's site; on the receiving end, the duplicate is discarded if it isn't needed. The recipient must also have Slam Dunk's software to decode the message.

The service keeps tabs on how quickly the originals and duplicates are sent to maintain optimal message routing, and it stores a copy of messages within Slam Dunk's network, so customers can track messages and confirm successful delivery.

Pricing for Slam Dunk's service starts at $1,000 a month for customers with the lowest traffic volume; it drops to 1 cent per kilobyte for high-volume customers.