IBM B2B Integrator Reviews

We're in the UAE. Out of the top 10 banks, there are around six or seven banks that are actually using the product as an SOA layer. As integration with that, they have a different core banking system. They have different layers. They have a B2B also and they have a partner ecosystem. 

Clients are using the solution for the legacy applications, they are using it for microservices that are designed for the various different use cases. There's card management based on that, for example. Every customer has a different requirement and different use cases.

Currently, I'm working with one customer in government where they're trying to build that complete enterprise integration layer, which will have an ESB that is going to connect to that and all their internal applications. They have multiple CRM ERB finance modules.

Afterward, they are exporting the API to external companies, including government entities through the APIs we are exposing, in order to exchange the data. 

There are multiple stakeholders, typically.

The IoT IBM has on offer is very good. There are event streams. These collect data from IoT devices and analyze the data in real-time. IBM has a partnership with that Kafka. They use Kafka for real-time event data collection.

They have an infra layer and a platform layer as well as a software and application layer and an integration layer. They have a big data portfolio. It's great for Kafka and that Hadoop, all the data streaming, data normalization, all those tools are on hand for data quality.

It's easy to collect, diagnose, and transform, and to do real-time analytics through that. We have a complete portfolio from IBM called IBM Cloud Pak for Integration. It's in a bunch of products.

Product-wise, the product portfolio it's a very good product. We have the data power that is the gateway security and it's a very good product. 

The stability is very good.

We've found the scalability to be very good.

The technical support on offer through the portal is very helpful and responsive.

The current trend is to have data integration, hybrid cloud integration, and microservices with further API monetization. The solution needs to ensure that it has all these capabilities in order to properly satisfy a customer's needs. 

The solution definitely needs that gateway security, where all messages need to be secured, from the security point of view. 

They do not have a solid partner ecosystem, and they do not have a clear roadmap for down the line; they're missing that clear roadmap.

They do not have proper documentation of legal requirements so that a partner or a customer can quickly learn and get familiar with it. IBM needs to do a better job of supplying these details.

I've been using the solution for 15 years or so. It's been well over a decade. It's been a while at this point.

It's a very tested and proven solution. If you're talking about that product portfolio-wise, product-wise, it's quite reliable. We can see in the Gartner Quadrant Table that IBM is always well-positioned. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The scalability of the product is excellent. If a company needs to build the solution out, they can do so.

There are thousands of organizations that are using the product worldwide. If I'm talking about the UAE, our market, in the UAE we have close to 72 customers who are using this product.

IBM offers PMR support. Customers can log into the IBM portal and they can create that PMR, and the IBM team, based on the complexity, can respond as appropriate. If there is a severe case, IBM can typically respond within 30 minutes to one hour. They are quite knowledgeable and very responsive.

I didn't use any other solution previously. Predominantly I was into IBM; I was working within IBM itself. When I left IBM, I joined a company that was also selling IBM software only. We have a DNSR contract. If a customer is asking for any specific region, then we can ping another vendor, however, we don't sell the other vendor's solution.

Usually, when I work with the customer, they come up from a tender RFP, where they have a complex requirement. They have a lot of legacy applications, and they have a different kind of hybrid cloud. They may be working with a Salesforce cloud and on-premises applications. It's not really straightforward. Typically, they are big enterprises with complex environments. It's rarely straightforward. 

We have our own consultancy team and we have a services delivery team within the company. They typically handle the deployment, however, sometimes, if we do not have the bandwidth or our own legal resources, we rely on a partner ecosystem where we have to engage with our partners to implement the solution.

There are multiple kinds of offerings. If the customer is going to deploy on-premises, we have a perpetual license. If the customer is going to use the solution like a software as a service cloud solution, it's a monthly subscription. It's all according to the customer requirement and the customer budget.

We don't use it for ourselves. I am part of the sales team. I used to sell this product to my customers. The customers use on-premises as well as cloud deployment models. 

The market has gone through a bit of a digital transformation. Customers need that integration layer that provides the capability to integrate with the various kinds of applications, and a solution should be able to integrate with the hybrid cloud. That is one of the major modern requirements.

A customer today will often have devices on-premises and often have a multi-cloud. A product should have the capability to have that integration supported by the hybrid cloud, and at the same time have the data integration layer with the capability for IoT sensors.

Whoever is trying to choose a tool needs to look for the integration to deploy to their enterprise. They have to look at all the aspects, and then they should select that tool that is going to be fit for their current requirements as well as their future needs.

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

One of the most valuable aspects of this solution is that it's a "consolidated" suite of communication protocols, offerings, data transformation and back-end application integration. It allows me to implement one solution, communicate with external and internal trading partners and transfer data between network systems using just one solution rather than many different solutions.

It allows us to scale quicker to what a customer needs. A lot of your available time is reduced because it's efficient.

It's a very good solution, but there's also room for improvement to make it easier and a little more user friendly. It's still more of a toolbox in a way. It's got a lot of components that you have to configure, which is great because it gives you extreme flexibility, but that also adds a level of complexity to it.

We could use templates and some shortcuts that would help users get up and running quicker and give them confidence in the solution.

Visibility and reporting is lacking. There are some default reporting capabilities such that we wouldn't have to build, for example, error reports, or bundling up. It should be more user friendly.

Also some pre-built, typical B2B business processes would be good, instead of having to build them out; I'd rather have some templates that we could use and modify.

It is mostly stable, depending on certain factors as there are a lot of different components. Some platforms are stable; all in all, I don't see any recent issues with stability.

Scalability is very good. It scales well vertically and horizontally also.

If you use the technical support, it's good for specific front-end issues. It's more of a challenge if you're trying to ask the "how to" questions, then it's not as good. For instance, "I am having this problem and this is the error"; here they can help find what the cause of that error is and related issues. But regarding the "how to" stuff, then they need to be better.

We upgraded because of limited capabilities in an earlier solution which didn't keep up with the set of standards, such as the newer versions of EDI, X12 standards, that are available in the Sterling product.

We realized the necessity for separate components, like for communications software versus back-end translation software or evaluating solutions and hardware without buying multiple products to put together.

The initial setup is both straightforward and complex. The newer versions have an installation manager which helps. Depending on the way you deploy it, you have to know cluster versus single instances or nuances which may be a challenge.

We looked at Axway and GXS and considered some of the transformations from some of the other vendors, transfer solutions, the tightness of the solution, the maturity of the solution.

When considering potential vendors we look at quality and the level of customers they do business with. We look at their success stories in the industry that I may be interested in. We ask questions like, "Have they done this before?", and "Do they know my industry and the companies that I know?"

We did some proofs of concept. We had certain scenarios, mapping translation scenarios, communication information-type scenarios that we ran through with each of the products to see how well they could handle it. Obviously, the outcome of those comparisons also influenced our recent choice.

IBM's mapping tool for translation is easier to use and intuitive, and it's been around a long time. Some of the other vendors are a little bit narrowly focused and maybe didn't have the scalability of the IBM product.

Try to reach out in the network of users via LinkedIn, or at an IBM conference. Get the feedback from other clients that use the solution and see if it's a fit, and what challenges it can meet for them.

The valuable feature is the ability to integrate across various enterprise systems. It's a very flexible tool. The way we have customized our solutions based on IBM Sterling B2B Integrator cannot be replicated by any other B2B vendor on the market right now.

One benefit is the flexibility. In our company, our bread and butter is a transportation system. We transport consumer product goods from Central America back to North America.

I would like to see the implementation of APIs into the solution mix. They are already working on this. I would like to see more capabilities to understand how easily APIs can connect and how they can be integrated with the existing B2B suite.

It is a pretty stable solution.

The only con of the scalability is that we are trying to see how we can scale to the cloud. It is not really clear at this point how this will occur with this solution. We don’t know how it will scale if we move to a hybrid, on-premise solution on the cloud. That's not really clear at this point. I am trying to learn precisely that.

I was not around when they chose the solution. At that point, I believe this was the best middle-of-the-road solution in the 2008-09 timeframe.

I was not part of the initial setup, but I was there during two subsequent upgrades of this solution. It is not something you actually plug and play. It's very complex and it actually requires a technical consultant. It's not something which is very easy.

The solution is very good for the traditional integration scenarios, such as point-to-point integrations. When you're looking to take the technology to the cutting edge, new age, digital, 21st-century, omni-channel kind of scenario, it still doesn’t make the cut.

When selecting a vendor, the most important factor is obviously the company size. This plays a role in the market. We go by the Gartner market leader recommendation. Anything on Gartner gets our "eyeballs."

I like the ability to:

• Customize
• Manage partners
• Do all the file transfers that it handles
• Write code
• Manipulate the files: Zip and unzip files, PGP the files, or any type of file manipulation

It allowed us to set up partners and communicate with our different vendors, in regards to file transfers for the bank.

Ciphers: Security around ciphers and handling the changes within that industry could use improvement. They could make it easier to enable and remove ciphers that you don't want to use or that have been deprecated, etc.

We have had no issues with stability.

We have had no issues with scalability.

The support I've had for the application is really good. They are very professional, courteous, helpful, and they get back in contact with you in a timely fashion.

I started with a company that was using Connect Enterprise, and it was just too open to scripting.

People weren't writing the same type of scripts, and it wasn't the type of application where someone could come in and pick it up. It was good that they got Sterling Integrator.

I was not involved in the initial setup at my particular job, but I was in the past. The complexity depends on how you want to use the app. You can definitely use it as is, out-of-the-box. However, most customers are going to want to customize it to their business.

They actually looked at Axway, and I think about five or six other vendors. We ended up going with Sterling Integrator because of its ease of deployment. You could jump in anywhere and deploy it on the server.

I would give them basic information about how to set it up to make sure that it runs efficiently. I would give them performance advice, as well as configuration advice on how to deal with partners, bringing files in and sending files out.

Any B2B integration, EDI & MFT

The application's performance is based on the database. It is the most competitive product currently available in the market if you compare it with any other MFT or integration products.

Connect:Direct and Sterling File Gateway are the products most banks use. These two products are effectively used for managed and secure file transfers. IBM B2B Integrator is used mostly by retailers and logistics companies.

The challenge is there is no related transaction stored in the database because it's an OLTP application.

We have been using this solution for more than 20 years. It is on private cloud, public cloud and on-premises. Most of the customers use on-premises. They also have a product called Global Mailbox, which is used for metadata between two data centres. They also provide high availability.

It can scale horizontally as well as vertically as a cluster. I have observed at least one twister with ten notes up and running. It is most suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises, and it is better to go for their tax model.

The technical support is good, and I rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is simple to install. Its placement is very simple. However, for implementation and maintenance, you need some technical knowledge. So it may be a bit complex for basic users.

The initial investment is high, but the renewable cost is much cheaper compared to other products.

We compared three top products, but IBM is a unique solution on the market. They have been on the market for over three decades, and the product stability and capability are great.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. They should add a good dashboard that can do one single review for all the transactions. Users can see how many transactions happen and the status. So, there is no single-view dashboard where businesses can access and view.

• Partner onboarding
• In-house application
• Enterprise integration
• B2B EDI enabling
• Single point integration solution

This solution supports almost all enterprise integrations and B2B/EDI protocols and messaging standards. It provides a clear roadmap and visibility on product upgrades and features.

• Allows for easy integration with heterogeneous applications.
• Out-of-box process orchestration yields quick implementations.

• API-Fication required, and there should be more clarity on their cloud migration strategy.
• Map translator needs more enhancements.
• End-to-end visibility and monitoring application required. The control center is available and covers this area, but it still fails in many monitoring scenarios.

It has a very powerful dashboard interface and as well has very powerful business orchestration built into the tool. It's one, central information exchange - that was the need of our business, we are a managed service for the translation of files. That is the core strength of the tool that we are leveraging, to deliver a managed service. It is a multi-tenant managed service that we are trying to build using B2B on ITXA (IBM Transformer Extender Advanced). Those features are the core strength of our solution architecture.

The real benefits are the out-of-the-box capabilities of IBM's healthcare package with an option to customize the maps. The out-of-the-box capabilities cover 90% of your business requirements.

Also, it gives you clear direction on how to handle the gap between what is being offered and what the customer is looking for.

I would like if they would expose some of the traffic patterns and status state information in the control center; also, to send state information to some of the trading partners as well. And some of the features we would like to see are with the ease of high availability and the ease of failing over.

Stability is something that we're working on. It's a brand new system. It's a debut system, and we have one tenant on board. We are planning to bring in 15 more tenants. So, this is not something that was introduced a long time ago. The stability is great right now. We are working with IBM to size our system and extrapolate our needs for the next five years. As of now, the stability is good, but we are looking for better and a highly scaled system in the near future.

Scalability is easy if it is implemented right. Adding nodes to the cluster and taking them out of the cluster is very seamlessly implemented into the tool.

We have pretty good and competent technical support and dedicated account managers from the IBM side. They're very responsive, time-sensitive and appropriate.

We did not have a previous solution. This is a brand new solution we put together.

For the initial setup, there was some learning curve on our side, being an account, but with IBM's help, we were able to do it easily. It could have been difficult, but with IBM's help we did it. I wouldn't call it easy, but it took as long as it did to do it right.
The difficulty is not with the tool but with bringing the team up to speed and giving them room to play with it. There's a learning curve with these environments, and once you set it up, it was downhill.

We evaluated multiple products. This is the one we have narrowed on. The other solutions are also from IBM tools. We were considering whether to use DataPower and their MQ Managed File Transfer as B2Bi and also some other EDI products. At one point, we were even considering TIBCO, but we evaluated all of them.

When selecting a vendor, we were looking for one unified platform where we can do business process orchestration, translation, compliance check, and also multi-tenancy.

If they are looking for a B2Bi solution, and I'm assuming that solution also will leverage some of the cognitive strengths of Watson, it's an awesome B2Bi solution. If anybody has a B2Bi business case, this is definitely one of the solutions, a mature solution in the market that they can consider.

It is GUI-based and has a very user-friendly interface. The new version of Sterling B2B Integrator has easy-to-use business processors and also built-in service-assigned adapters. That helps a lot. Instead of having to create them from scratch, you can just use the ones which were already created and then you can customize them according to your needs.

It definitely helps do things faster and with fewer errors. It is more efficient.

I would like to see a more step-by-step way of doing things. Even though it is a GUI-based interface, there are certain things that will get stuck if you do not understand it. I would like to see that be included along with the instructions.

It is more than 90% stable. I haven't seen it slowing down or crashing, or any of those types kind of things.

Scalability is more than 90%.

I use IBM support from time to time. I use them because there are certain things we have not done before. While installing, we had some hands-on issues with the new versions.

I have mixed feelings about technical support, because they are very good sometimes. It's very hard to reach the correct source, but they are very knowledgeable, if you can find the right person. It's a 50/50 experience.

It was a bit complex to reach the person who knows what we are trying to fix. I know they are capable of helping once we get to the right person.

We have been using this product for the last 10-13 years. They get better and better every time they have a new version. They fix issues that we had in the previous versions. We always want to keep up with the latest and the greatest.

I was involved in the initial setup. It has changed a lot since we had them in the past.

They are trying to come up with the more user-friendly GUI based solutions for installations. The first time we did it, it took time to understand.

I have done a couple of upgrades on the same installation. The second or third experience is better than the first experience.

We evaluated IBM and GXS. We chose IBM because they are the world leader, their market is huge, and they are reliable. Their people have knowledge if you run into any issues once you start using it and if you need support.

When selecting a vendor, I look for pricing, scalability, reliability, and the basic things.

I would definitely recommend others to go with this solution. You can learn and invest in the future rather than selecting a solution in which you do not know if it's going to last for long.