IBM B2B Integrator Reviews

We use the Windows version of this solution. It integrates with a proprietary, SQL-based ERP. It provides standard EDI using VAN, AS2, FTP, SFTP, HTTP. 

The full cycle from order to payment is covered. Also, it performs XML realtime transactions where customers can check stock, order status, and place realtime orders. 

B2B Integrator has reduced manual entry of purchase orders. Everything from the order to fulfillment to the payment process, except for physical packing and shipping, is fully automated for some customer orders.

The most valuable feature is having a full set of tools in one place to create customized business processes, mapping, and connectivity. It includes everything you need for B2B. 

The improvements that need to be made are mostly little things.

The Extended Rule windows in the mapper only have two settings: small window or full screen. When working on an elaborate rule, I end up creating it in notepad and then pasting it into the Extended Rule window, which is not convenient.

We have been using this solution for twelve years.

The extendability is the most important feature, which we need. Needless to say, we like the way it works almost seamlessly with WebSphere products. Our work is mainly dependent on WebSphere, so Sterling fits in well for us.

From India's perspective, you are now completely changing the way e-commerce is happening. Efficiency, accuracy, and reliability are extremely important factors and Sterling B2B currently provides them.

It's a successful product and a big improvement for us. There are some areas of improvement, but what we thought it would deliver and the reality is pretty close.

Sterling cognitive analytics is a big thing. If they can do that, that will be great.

Stability is good.

Scalability is great.

Technical support is the issue I have. I think IBM has to do much better in terms of product support. IBM consultants, the software group consultants, are unbelievably expensive, and their support is of lower quality. The good part is that there is a knowledge base throughout the web and so we leverage that. But an improvement area for IBM is to provide better product support.

Our original architecture was WebSphere-based, so we were an IBM Business Partner. We started looking around and Sterling, of course, came out. So, it was a natural fate, more or less.

I myself was not involved in the initial setup, but our company was. We had some really good, smart Sterling folks, so it was OK for us. It was challenging, but it was OK for us. But, I heard it's a nightmare. This is why people hire us for Sterling work.

Actually, there were quite a few alternatives, but we are an IBM Business Partner and we rely on IBM. We try to fit in with IBM solutions, more or less. But we looked at TIBCO and we looked at something from Oracle as well; and there was a Microsoft product.

Get a Sterling expert. Without that, the product might not be successful.

• 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.

The business processes are the most valuable features. We were using FTP before. We are migrating to Sterling MFT. We are doing some modifications to send and receive files, and we are managing them with business processes.

Sterling B2B Integrator is a managed file transfer program. Beforehand, we were using FTP and each FTP server was standalone, not controlled by any management facility. Now we have migrated to Sterling B2B Integrator and we have Control Center. We can manage all file transfers by Control Center. We can also create new file transfers over Control Centers without doing some things on the File Gateway. We can also do that over the File Gateway.

It doesn't support the Turkish language now. They said they will support Turkish in the new release, so we are waiting. It's a problem now because we are opening this product to our customers, not only internal users. For internal users, maybe it's acceptable to use English but it's not acceptable for customers. They are working on it and, actually, by the end of this year, it will be available.

Stability is good because we are using the high availability mode. We are using two SFG (Sterling File Gateway) nodes. They are clusters in an active-active configuration, and we don't have any interruptions. The only bottleneck is in the database part and we are working to do something about it by speaking with IBM to see how we can solve this problem.

Scalability is good. When we were using FTP, it was not scalable; you have to install new servers for each one. With Sterling B2B Integrator, you can manage and collect everything on the same platform. It is an end-to-end solution. We have a mainframe, we have Sterling Connect: Direct on the mainframe, we have File Gateway, we have Unix and Windows Connect: Directs , and we have some security parts of Secure Proxies. Also, we did some integration with our LDAP Active Directory, so we don't create named users for company users. We just give permissions based on job function and adjust it. We don't need to create local users. That's why it's very scalable for us.

Actually, we started migration in 2015, and we are getting very good support from IBM. We also have other products from IBM and being a big company in Turkey. We are managing cases or PMRs like other products and we can get extra support. There are some clever technical guys there. We have direct contact with them and they support us when we need them.

As I've mentioned, the reason why we chose Sterling B2B Integrator instead of others was that it has an end-to-end solution. It has mainframe parts, it has Unix and Windows parts and it is also a centrally managed system with Control Center. It is good and better than others.

There are some other solutions, but they don't cover everything. You have to use some other product for the mainframe side. You have to use some other management tools or something like that.

That's why we chose Sterling Integrator; it has good functionality. It is guaranteed file transfer delivery. FTP doesn't guarantee it. With FTP, you send a file, it says it can, but maybe it cannot.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

We also evaluated Globalscape CuteFTP, CA XCOM, and IBM's own FTP solution. We were using IBM FTP on the mainframe side, and we were using CuteFTP on the server side. Some other groups in my company were also looking at Globalscape. We created a requirement list together with the security team and the servers team, to evaluate which solution can cover everything. IBM was successful, so we chose IBM Sterling.

We were already customers of IBM. We actually knew Sterling. It's not a new product. It was a Sterling company product, then it was acquired by IBM. It's better for us; that's why we are using Sterling now.

I recommend it.

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.

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.

The EDI conversion is the only thing I like about it. We have got a lot of clients, maybe 6000-plus clients and around 15 flavors of EDIs. We get EDIs from them, do the conversion, send it to either the IBM Integration Bus (IIB) or create IDOCS to SAP and for the other direction, as well.

We have got a lot of purchase orders and invoices coming through, which is the only door in and out to the company. Thus, it's kind of a critical path for us.

Probably, the mapping aspect needs to be improved. The stability is also something to look into; definitely we need that for now, but for the future, the mapping process is not that great.

It needs good monitoring. We are experiencing issues in terms of the speed and also for trying to clean up and back up.

We did experience stability issues. That part I'm not too happy about. I think we need to work on it. Sometimes it is slow, so we had to kind of clean out the database. We are trying to look more into that.

We are in the process of contacting the technical support team. I would give them a 6/10 rating.

We were using mainframe. We were going to get rid of mainframe and that product wasn't going to survive out of mainframe. So, we had to look at something else.

I'm not an administrator, so I didn't hear much in terms of the installation. I think it was smooth.

Test it thoroughly, not just carry out surface-level testing. Make sure the business logic works as to how you're going to store the data, how much data you will need, how slow it's going to be, i.e., once you've stored the data against it and so on.

We use it to move data files back and forth in a secure fashion. That's primarily what we do.

We move quite a bit of files. It gives us the ability to have a system in place that moves all those files and delivers them to the appropriate recipients.

I would like to see more analytics and more information gathering about what is going where. Right now, we don't have good insight as to what's going where within the ecosystem.

The stability has been fine in our ecosystem. We could have done the deployment implementation a little differently because we have two sites.

We should have had two sites up and running. That deployment was a little lacking. I think we probably could have fostered something a little better.

It scales well if you have enough money. It is a very expensive platform.

We have had no issues with technical support.

I was not involved in the setup.

You have to look at a lot of factors such as:

• Scalability
• High availability
• Disaster recovery
• Usability
• Performance

Just do your homework. That's all it boils down to. Every vendor and every customer is going to be different, depending on their host system.