Each of your partners has its own system that communicates with your Trading Networks system. The partner system does not have to use Trading Networks or other Software AG software. When you identify a partner to your Trading Networks system, you provide information about how to connect to and exchange documents with the partner.

The following diagram illustrates various configurations of partners in a trading network.

In this network, one partner system is an Integration Server that is not using Trading Networks. The application server and marketplace partner systems are not using any Software AG software. The partner in the center is referred to as the hub of the network. The other partners are referred to as spokes. The hub hosts the network and the spokes participate by interacting with the hub.

A Trading Networks partner does not have to be exclusively a hub or a spoke; it can be both, as shown in the following diagram. It can be a hub of its own network and a spoke in another partner's network.