IBM B2B Integrator Reviews

I implement the solution and then use it for application support. Our primary use case is for B2B integration for our customers. I'm a B2B architect. 

It's important to me that B2B provides a secure communication channel. It offers robust data transformation so there aren't any challenges and it's able to support all of the use cases in B2B. This is a very convenient and widely used solution. 

It would be helpful if the dashboard could be integrated and possibly bundled by the product vendor. It currently comes as a separate package.

I've been using this solution for eight years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

My team has interacted with the product vendor for various issues and the support is reasonable. 

Positive

The initial setup is not very easy, but it's not very complex either. Part of it depends on the expertise of the person carrying out the deployment. If it's someone with experience, deployment will be straightforward, otherwise it can be difficult. Implementation time differs depending on various factors including the number of servers and PUs. Maintenance is simple if you have the right people for the job.

Pricing depends on geography and the volume of work that you're dealing with. The cost can vary drastically depending on the requirement but in general the cost is reasonable. 

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

The key features that you would expect from the solution are:

• The communications and the protocols: The communication is very critical for any B2B product, especially for EDI commerce activities.
• The protocols and standards that are supported.
• The transformation leg, which is the transaction confirmation.
• The business process orchestration around the inbound and outbound transactions.

In this particular space, Sterling B2B Integrator has been the number one solution in the marketplace.

When you go across the country, you see this solution the majority of the time. You don't even have to think about it. That's how dominant that product is. This is what used to be called Gentran. It started off on the mainframe and now it is running on almost all the platforms.

Of course, there are a couple of competitors in the marketplace. However, when it comes to stability, performance, standards, and the breadth of the support in various countries, this is an awesome solution.

The benefits are in terms of the two most critical sides of the business: the buy side and the sell side.

This has become the de facto standard. It helps in the supply chain optimization problems. There are still a lot of customers who still are using paper-based transaction processing. Some still are using faxes, but this is the way to go.

Even though API management has become so popular, corporate businesses are still going on API.

Visibility is really a cool thing. There's a built-in Sterling Control Center, which provides great visibility for all the different things.

It's not only about visibility. It's about acting on an alert or acting on a critical situation that might be failing.

For example, if I have some SLAs and if I'm not going to meet them, I want to be alerted ahead of time, not after the fact. That's one of the good capabilities that this product has.

There have been a couple of issues that we have raised in terms of scalability and high availability. IBM has responded back with the next-generation product and new features like the global mailbox and a couple of other things, which are pretty cool. We would like to use the same product without having to go for the add-on products.

This product has been in the marketplace for such a long time. The current version, 5.24, has been very stable for the last year and a half. The 5.26 version is a very simple upgrade.

It is pretty scalable and stable. Scalability and stability are both perfect, spot on.

There are times when we call IBM support, especially for the new releases. They are pretty good at responding. It's all about how you interact with them, and how quickly can you provide all the details about your product, your version, and the log files.

A lot of times, customers have issues.

Customer: "I have a problem."

Technical support: "What is the problem?"

Customer: "This is my problem. My translation is not happening."

Technical support: "What version?"

There is this constant dialogue that is going back and forth. If the customer can provide all that information in one shot as technical support is logging the ticket, then that will speed it up and you can get a resolution quickly.

The other challenge is that customers say that the problem is mission-critical, but they don't have the person available to address the issue. The customer has to make sure that there is somebody to receive and handle the call so they can get a resolution within 24 hours.

The previous solutions had challenges. A lot of the customers came to us saying they wanted a new standard and what they had was failing. They said, "We need a better platform and we need something which has lots of enterprise trust."

We evaluated Microsoft and OpenText. Sterling is the best.

When selecting a vendor, I look for company stability, the product, and the depth of experience. Those are the things that really matter.

We're using this product for managed file transfer. This gives you the ability to isolate a source system and a target system. You stick a Sterling managed file transfer in the middle, which allows you to deploy that isolation. It gives you the ability to replay the data in case of a failure, allows you to retry, and gives you extensive error notification.

It has many more capabilities, but we are using it as a managed file console. Sterling is a full B2B platform. This means you can do a lot of data transformation and things like that.

This has become our new file hub. Any data coming from any partner first hits Sterling. It provides a whole security layer. It has become our security. A component of Sterling is housed in the so-called “DMZ”, demilitarized zone.

A simple advantage is you are providing a proxy. This means that the outside world does not know where they are sending their data. They send it to Sterling. Sterling manages the data and determines where it goes in the environment.

Due to the way Sterling is designed, you do not open your firewalls for incoming streams at all. Sterling has a proprietary way of communicating between the secure network and the DMZ that allows you to completely protect your environment from outside attacks.

It is now our core managed file transfer platform.

Better integration with other IBM products is definitely the main piece with room for improvement.

It's very stable, but it's got its quirks. For example, all the file-based data is stored in a database.

There is an option for a user file system, but the recommended approach by IBM is primarily to use a database to store all the file data. This is not an optimum way to do things. We're already running into a lot of database space issues, in archiving, etc. But, again, that is implementation criteria.

Scalability is perfectly fine. You can do whatever you want. You can scale it up as much as you want. We're nowhere near being in a position where we will be running into capacity issues. However, I believe it's highly scalable.

We were using a simple FTP server that was sitting in the DMZ. We really needed a fully functioning platform and managed file transfer. This solution provided that.

We changed solutions because we looked at the stability of the product and the company's commitment to it.

We looked at what we were replacing in terms of our core integration product, which was already a product that IBM had acquired. It had to become an IBM product.

Certain parts of what we had in the environment were maybe usable by IBM. The reusability of its SAP infrastructure was a key decision.

I was involved in the setup. It was very complex.

Different components need to be in the DMZ. There is the authentication piece, which probably requires integration with something like Active Directory, which we didn't go with.

We're using Sterling's own data store. The sheer number of pieces and the communication, especially the communication between Sterling and IBM's other products, is not evolved because IBM acquired this company recently, relatively speaking. The integration between its core ESB and Sterling is not well defined.

In fact, we went down one route by using Connect:Direct. We actually had to abandon it after putting in a substantial amount of work. We then went with a simple FTP approach after that.

It seems like Sterling continues to operate as a very independent company within IBM, and that's a problem.

We evaluated Oracle, IBM, and SAP.

In terms of selecting a vendor, we certainly look at their reputation and the quality of their products. We look at their ability to stand behind their products and improve them. IBM is very committed to their products, their platform, and building it.

If you are looking at the solution as a managed file transfer tool, it does the job. There are probably similar products out there, just from an MFT perspective.

Sterling has integrated itself as a B2B platform. This is excellent, because it has many capabilities that we are not using currently. It is a full replacement for EDI, but we're not using it currently. 

I know that the product is very capable. IBM needs to integrate it better into their portfolio of other products in order to make it work better.

I would recommend it, but be careful because it is complex and there are gaps in compatibility.

The most valuable feature is its capability to integrate with multiple protocols.

It provides a single point of visibility for all the transfers that we conduct within our bank. It has great audit-lock capabilities for anything that I have to go back and look at as well. On top of it all, it's also secure.

One of the top most features that is missing is the integration with the ASPERA FASP protocol for us, which is still missing on the B2B Integrator. IBM bought ASPERA a few years back but haven't been able to provide this protocol integration with their B2B file gateway. However, the same is now integrated with ‎Connect:Direct for a standalone solution but not on the Connect:Direct adapter within Sterling Integrator.

So, that's the primary one. There are just a few missing aspects in terms of the integration; otherwise, the product is good. It's pretty scalable. It's pretty easy to use once the install is done. It has a user interface, which is great. So, everything except a few challenges on the new integration. That's it.

It's pretty stable. We generally don't apply the latest patches and the latest versions as they come out. We give it some time before we go ahead and install it, because the general IBM tendency has been to follow a version with a couple of hot fixes on top of it. In the past, we have had issues when we did upgrade to the latest version.

It's pretty scalable; I don't doubt that. The only thing I feel right now is that it has slowed down in terms of integrating with other new technologies. For example, Aspira hasn't yet been integrated with this B2B solution, which in my opinion is the need of the hour.

The technical support is always great.

I wasn't using any other better solution than the one that I'm using right now. So, I think IBM B2B Sterling Integrator and Sterling File Gateway is the leader and I don't see any other product as compelling as that one.

The setup was not too complex; I've been doing it for a while. Of course, you need some advanced knowledge of B2B integration and study integrator tools, in order to go ahead and be able to install it correctly.

It's great. Build your team, because you would need constant administration of this gateway. Even though when I say it's not complex, you need a dedicated admin to take care of your investment, i.e., if it's going to be a big gateway for your organization. But apart from that, once you have it, it is automated on its own.

It is easy of use and it's easy to maintain. It's also faster to on-board partners.

It has ended invisibility, which is not there any more. That's a big implement for any solution.

There are a couple of issues which could be improved. One is the outcome of the ITXA integration on installation. We need better visibility around code lists. There is the handling of code lists and API calls to support partial update of any interfaces, training partner management, all of which is not there today. Their integration with ICCs is only limited to ADI, but it should be open for other formats.

Also, there should be a single place to do things, rather than making it complicated, not moving away and truncating the old features but instead coming up with the new and still keeping the old stuff confuses people sometimes. I think that's pretty much what I would like to say.

I have used the solution for the past 15 years.

Stability is still not where it's supposed to be. There is always a challenge when we upgrade things and improve on new versions.

Scalability is great.

For my company, I would say the technical support is about 9/10. The only hesitation I have is the inability for IBM to understand the customer's need, and improve their product. Our requests were not responded to in a timely manner and the announcement was not done the way ABC would have benefited from it. But the majority of our concerns were addressed on time.

We were already an IBM shop but not to the newest technologies. So we ran into the situation where our systems were not as scalable. We didn't have end to end visibility, which became a key part of our business functions because we need to get into all the solutions.

We wanted to make sure that we have a single integrated application, which can fulfill the need of all the backend applications. Looking at the current solution to improve that was costlier. So we decided to go with an out-of-the-box solution from IBM, and that's where we are.

The complete setup is always complex. Any new setup you do is not always straightforward, it takes months. So there are two aspects to consider here. One is the installation part and one is configuration to make it work.

Installation was simple and straightforward. But the configuration to tune the system to make it function the way it was intended to, wasn't known up-front. For instance with regard to clustering issues we ran into when we were in production. If we would have known that up-front, it would have saved us time and energy in the chaotic situation we were in. Those sort of challenges could have been improved if we had known it up-front.

There were a couple of criteria when selecting a vendor. We had four big players. We did compare, we had a demo on-site. We did POCs and RFCs. After four weeks of exercise, we selected IBM.

The key challenge is that the Sterling Integrator has been there in this industry for more than two decades. There are key loopholes, or I would say there are low-hanging issues with the Sterling Integrator, and they could have all been improved.

Unparalleled, they try to invest energy to integrate with other applications of IBM products. The key essential part of what you are doing should be focused and unparalleled. I know it takes time. There are a lot of other fears being raised by lots of customers.

I have been a user for Sterling Integrator for the last 15 years. So it's not the first one for me and I see the same problems as all the clients. If those would improve, this would become best of breed.

There are also other challenges on the visibilities. Right now there are at least 10 to 15 players in the market, which build solutions using Sterling Integrator as a backbone. So why not IBM? If we have that as a single source of truth, we can install it in-house.

Whatever industry or company, it doesn't matter. Depending on their need, Sterling Integrator is still a big framework for anyone who is looking to integrate their backend applications which are in legacy mode today, and their point to point applications. If they really want to have this type of application, well it's scalable and Sterling Integrator is still the solution.

I have been a speaker here for Sterling Integrator, and I think IBM already has at least four or five prospects here. They're talking to me to understand how we did at ABC. So I'm helping them to get to us.

It's one of the super solutions today.

It's a very flexible product. It's stable and it's been around for many, many years. We were a Gentran NT user previously. We moved over to Sterling Integrator and we are very happy with the translation part of it. We don't use it for communication but we're happy with the translation capability.

It helps us to consolidate multiple divisions into one Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) source. We had multiple EDI teams at one point on the mainframe and we converted them all into one single center of excellence for Sterling Integrator and EDI.

I think probably the envelope setups are a little complicated and cumbersome. There are a lot of pages to go through. I know there's ITXA, a new product that came out that should help with that but maybe they can use some of that knowledge from ITXA and put it into the existing BDBI setup.

Maybe also the navigation part could be a little easier, when trying to track documents.

I think it's very stable. I don't really have a lot of issues.

We're currently moving into a clustered environment so we're going to add to the scalability using two different servers and they're going to be in an active - active mode.

I have used the technical support a number of times. We've always had a good relationship as far as opening tickets is concerned. I think sometimes it's hard to navigate the website for the knowledge base and finding information or documentation is a little bit tough but usually when we call we get a good answer.

Wwe were a Gentran shop before and all our maps were in Gentran so it was a natural progression to go to BDBI so we didn't have to redo our maps. We have maybe 600 different maps so we didn't want to reengineer all those in a new platform.

The setup is fairly complex. As you do more and more installs or migrations you get a little better at it each time and we usually come up with our own documentation that we customize. We go through it and we use it as a template for each install, for each version upgrade.

It is expensive. There's a lot of overhead, there's a lot of involvement to install and maintain it.

I think we did evaluate some other solutions before but they would have had to have been half the price and completely irresistible to make us switch from Sterling. I don't think we really had an intention to leave Sterling at the time.

When considering a vendor we look at the overall cost, whether the vendor company has changed hands a lot, and what their capabilities are.

I would say make sure that they really have a high volume, a number of partners and transactions to justify the cost of putting BDBI in. Maybe if they're a smaller shop or there is some other translation software they might want to go with or going on the Cloud might be another option for a smaller company. Our size is very large and we have 12 people in our BDBI team right now that support the EDI and communications.

The product is easily transportable - it'll go to any platform. We can make any business, an electronic commerce business in no time at all. We have enough experience with the software itself so that a company can go out and buy the IBM product, hook that company up with us, we can put the software they need on it, and they can be in business in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

Well perhaps an easier way of getting questions answered would be useful. The emailing of questions into IBM's site for Sterling support works but it would be nicer if we had more. The knowledge base does leave a little bit to be expected.

I don't see that it needs anything more. It does everything just the way it is right now. There is a lot of years of development back from when Sterling was an independent company, before IBM took over. They formed a niche and we have it.

The stability is unbelievably good and we have a Sterling hotline for all of our Sterling questions. They're very responsive. IBM is a little bit of a cumbersome thing in front of it, but we know how to get out around that and it works out very well. What happens is a customer that spends $1,000,000 in their budget, they get support all the time as they need it and the company itself doesn't have to be technically savvy. All they need to do is interface with our company, Sea Level Solutions, and they have everything they need to keep business running.

It can go any size. It's a little bit expensive for a mom-and-pop shop, but again, IBM will be having much smaller packages, which will be more affordable.

I am technical support. I am like first and second line, if I don't know it I can usually get on a phone call to someone who can get me answers within a reasonable length of time, 6-12 hours.

I supported another product from TSI Software back in the 90s when Gentran
Basic was being developed.

I rated it a nine because there is always a little bit of room for improvement.

I would advise colleagues to find a way to be able to utilize this product because it would give them everything they need and then some because it's just it's a very versatile product.

The solution covers a multitude of functions including file interchange between applications. That includes all the EDI flows. It can also be used in finance providing support for all the finance standards. Above all, this is a product for the interchange of files between internal applications and external. We are gold partners with IBM and I'm the head of the division. 

This product is very flexible, it allows you to implement different flows on the same infrastructure. It has the power to support every layer of security required on the market. It includes the option to integrate software to sign, authenticate and encrypt. For this reason, it's the most commonly used product of its kind in the banking sector because it allows you to interchange every type of file with four levels of security as well as having the ability to handle huge files. 

The web interface of B2B is quite ancient and not particularly user-friendly. It's quite difficult to navigate within the dashboard of the product and understand the features. Whenever they bring out a new version, the new features are not documented for the first month although they are visible. I can try using them but it's really not possible without the documentation which really needs to be provided in tandem with the new features. Additional features I'd like to see are the integration of some external tools for API management. IBM has a lot of such tools and some could easily be integrated.

I've been using this solution for 16 years. 

The solution is generally stable. When it's not, this is usually not related to the product. It may be that there are some database issues.

The solution is easily scalable, horizontally and vertically, and in every typeof container, whether on-prem or cloud. 

The technical support is very good. 

The complexity of the deployment really depends on the situation. It's quite similar to Software AG in those terms. It requires the correct operating system, availability of the database, firewalls must be open, etc. We sometimes lose time because not all the system requirements are correctly handled by the customer. A regular deployment can be completed in a week, and a more complex one, anywhere up to three weeks. The organizations are generally mid to enterprise-size and can have thousands of users. We might use up to eight engineers for the largest deployments and we cover a very huge infrastructure. We also provide support to our customers. 

ROI is variable. Some customers have been able to get a return on investment in two months, and some others in one year which is also good.

This is the most expensive solution of its kind in the market, but it's also the Ferrari of the market. The pricing is quite flexible, particularly when it comes to new customers or smaller organizations. They have a very intelligent policy for attracting new customers that includes a variety of licensing modules.

I rate this solution nine out of 10.