Senior Consultant at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
2024-09-19T14:28:00Z
Sep 19, 2024
The package that IBM delivers does not come with many premade tools or templates. This means we have to create a lot of things by ourselves, which requires more work. We have a team of four to five people just to develop map-based programs. Additionally, the initial setup could be simpler and better.
The solution's licensing cost is too high. The resources required for this tool are costly and not easily available in the market. I have faced issues with the certificates. We get issues if our source and destination Connect:Direct nodes do not have the latest TLS 1.2. Installing the solution is quite difficult because only an experienced person can do it. Newcomers will not be able to configure the entire solution.
Systems Infrastructure Manager at Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank - Egypt
Real User
Top 10
2023-03-20T13:27:41Z
Mar 20, 2023
There is room for improvement in monitoring. We don't have good visibility tools and monitoring, so I believe there may be some enhancement needed in its monitoring dashboard.
The user interface could be more user-friendly. The internal protocol for NEO file on file transfer could be improved because the user can sometimes find themselves lost.
Learn what your peers think about Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct could improve by adding some of the functionality that some other vendors have. For example, GoAnywhere has call agents, which are small clients that can be installed on the endpoints and can be handled by the central point on the server. If I want to do this with the IBM solution, I have to sell a lot of account addresses. The price could be unprofitable for the customer. There is some small functionality that could be implemented and could be easily done to improve this solution.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2022-01-04T21:51:00Z
Jan 4, 2022
The product could be improved by making the user interface more user-friendly. Adding nodes, connections and managing the support is too complicated. Sterling Commerce ConnectDirect would be better if it had a reverse proxy integrated into the DMZ because usually the nodes are installed directly on secure sites internally. We need to put them through additional servers, which is not easy to do. If the product came with its own DMZ portion server it would be helpful.
Manager 3rd Party Application Support at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
2021-05-12T12:23:15Z
May 12, 2021
The user interface needs to be improved. It's very rarely used. Technical support is difficult to work with. I would like to see more adapters created that allow other protocols to send to it.
IBM's Sterling Connect:Direct is a software product that offers security-hardened, point-to-point file transfers to reduce reliance on insecure File Transfer Protocol (FTP) transmissions. It is designed for high-volume file distribution within and between businesses. The solution guarantees more reliable file movement, from batch integration and movement of large images or catalogs to synchronization with distant sites. Sterling Connect:Direct also enables hybrid cloud deployment through...
I do not have any notes for improvement.
The package that IBM delivers does not come with many premade tools or templates. This means we have to create a lot of things by ourselves, which requires more work. We have a team of four to five people just to develop map-based programs. Additionally, the initial setup could be simpler and better.
The solution's licensing cost is too high. The resources required for this tool are costly and not easily available in the market. I have faced issues with the certificates. We get issues if our source and destination Connect:Direct nodes do not have the latest TLS 1.2. Installing the solution is quite difficult because only an experienced person can do it. Newcomers will not be able to configure the entire solution.
There is room for improvement in monitoring. We don't have good visibility tools and monitoring, so I believe there may be some enhancement needed in its monitoring dashboard.
This solution cannot be deployed on a root_squash NFS, which limits superuser privileges.
The user interface could be more user-friendly. The internal protocol for NEO file on file transfer could be improved because the user can sometimes find themselves lost.
Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct could improve by adding some of the functionality that some other vendors have. For example, GoAnywhere has call agents, which are small clients that can be installed on the endpoints and can be handled by the central point on the server. If I want to do this with the IBM solution, I have to sell a lot of account addresses. The price could be unprofitable for the customer. There is some small functionality that could be implemented and could be easily done to improve this solution.
The product could be improved by making the user interface more user-friendly. Adding nodes, connections and managing the support is too complicated. Sterling Commerce ConnectDirect would be better if it had a reverse proxy integrated into the DMZ because usually the nodes are installed directly on secure sites internally. We need to put them through additional servers, which is not easy to do. If the product came with its own DMZ portion server it would be helpful.
The user interface needs to be improved. It's very rarely used. Technical support is difficult to work with. I would like to see more adapters created that allow other protocols to send to it.