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IBM B2B Integrator vs IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services vs Mule ESB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

Business-to-Business Middleware
Business-to-Business Middleware
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
 

Featured Reviews

Nagasaikiran Kesana - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast, easy to use, and useful for integration purposes
In the initial stage, I used only business processes to build code. As I used the product more and more, I learned that we could monitor, perform support activities, and install and upgrade servers. We can learn how to manage the clients to get business. We must get into a call with customers and get their requirements. We must pass all the test cases, both positive and negative. We need to manage our team as well. We use various protocols for data security, like SFTP, FTP, and HTTP. We follow the security levels based on the customer’s requirements. We encrypt the file, and the customers decrypt it using the public and private keys we provide. Customers who need high security opt for HTTP certificates and AS2. I have also worked on AWS and Azure to pass files to the buckets. I also work on single sign-on authentication. External users can access our dashboard with a few details. For example, if our customers need to see whether a file is transferred from our end, they can easily log in to the details and monitor it. They can also perform health checks. I will recommend the tool to others. People who want to use the tool must not do anything blindly. They must analyze, learn the concept, and understand the purpose of the tool. There are other products in the market, like MuleSoft, that have the same functionality. We must understand why we are using IBM B2B Integrator. We must gather some information. I take some introductory classes for the new joiners in my organization. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Joshua Rule - PeerSpot reviewer
Comes with real-time integration suite and best security
We use the product in an integrated environment where the client needs a variety of different file transfer protocols as well as an integrated file translation service IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services offers the best security.  The product's most valuable feature is the real-time…
PurbayanSaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Has API-led architecture and provides a unique, user-friendly, and scalable architecture for hosting APIs
There's room for improvement in multi-file transfer functionality. It's not convenient when using MuleSoft, and it should have better capability for handling large amounts of data. For example, applications like GoAnywhere can handle huge chunks of data, so the tool should also have something to facilitate that aspect of integration.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is fast and easy to use."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility and the range of EDI standards that IBM Sterling can handle."
"The solution is useful for transferring files from one format to another format. Also, the solution is useful in translation."
"Very flexible product; it allows implementing different flows on the same infrastructure."
"It's highly stable, and the redundancy is amazing. B2B Integrator also has a high availability option to work in a cluster environment. You rarely have issues operating it because of the HA."
"B2B Integrator is multi-platform, so it can be integrated with Windows, Unix, or whatever, and it can work with almost all programming languages. It can also transfer a lot of data in a short time. For instance, a system I recently implemented exchanges about 20 million files a day."
"IBM B2B Integrator is a great tool, robust, reliable, low-maintenance, and ideal solution."
"The most valuable features assist with understanding data formats and transforming data."
"They have best-in-class, quality support."
"IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services is a stable and scalable product."
"They have multiple features for each kind of task and issue. The company has different channels to give information to the administration. Security and integration capabilities are also important. This product has helped to replace a lot of other solutions, saving time and cost."
"The solution is extremely scalable."
"The product's most valuable feature is the real-time integration suite."
"We are able to monitor all B2B messages, and we are able to see or track each message on it from an error perspective. That's a good side of it. It is working well, and we're able to do our current job."
"The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot."
"Scalability and load balancing."
"The transformation and the data format are the features that I like the most."
"The most valuable feature is the Salesforce integration."
"The most beneficial features of Mule ESB are the control plane and runtime plane."
"This tool has exceptional API management and integration connectors in addition to multiple out of the box connectors."
"What Mule provides out-of-box is a sufficient product."
"The cloud and integration abilities are most useful allowing us to use applications such as Salesforce and DataWeave."
 

Cons

"There are also some features in the solution that are not user-friendly, like code lists with no search options. So, we must navigate hundreds of pages to check for one entry."
"It supports many of our use cases but falls short in some areas as technology evolves"
"The tool requires you to write a lot of code in Java and XSLT, which makes development tough."
"The one thing that is lacking is easy visibility. It's hard to provide business users with a view into the statuses of their transactions."
"The mapping, visibility, deployment, and the dashboard could be improved and updated. The communication logs are very poor. They are not easily understood, and we need to navigate to many places for many reasons. You can't just pull the information; it's very tough."
"The product does not have default options for PDF generation."
"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."
"The web interface of B2B is quite outdated and not particularly user-friendly."
"Onboarding on the solution is complex. It's hard to onboard partners and customer suppliers. It's one aspect that is not that straightforward."
"It can be now classified as a legacy system because there are no more updates. From what I know, there will be no updates for the current version, which is an issue. Therefore, we are looking for a compatible new software that we can use. We're currently researching what is there in the market. We would consider something that would give us better speed on our current processor. There is also room for improvement in terms of its scalability and GUI. It is an old system, and its scalability can be improved. Its GUI can also be more appealing."
"The only weaknesses they have different governance for each task and different channels for communication which are hard to maintain. The relation of the company with other companies can be improved. We have a lot of customers who this platform for the interchange of information which can also be improved. The compliance information about banks can also be updated."
"They can improve APIs because they are still lagging behind in API connectivity. With non-API connectivity, they're market leaders, but API connectivity, they're still in the immature space."
"It's not easy to troubleshoot and we still can't make it work."
"There are some issues with both stability and scalability."
"The stability could be improved."
"Documentation is cryptic, product releases are far too frequent, and upgrades become troublesome."
"There are limitations with the subscription model that comes with the product."
"The payment system needs improvement."
"Community editions need more attention."
"One area that could be improved is the way that policies are propagated when APIs are moved from one environment to another. It's an issue, but when you develop and test the rest APIs in a lower environment and need to move them, there's a propagation process. This process moves certain aspects of the APIs, like the basic features. But when we move them, the policies don't always move with them. The policies should be able to move so we don't have to redo them manually. There are some APIs we use, but it's a bit tedious."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product costs more than 40K."
"The price of IBM B2B Integrator is too high. However, IBM may be willing to give a discount if there are negotiations. If they see that there is a good opportunity for them they can provide a discount."
"The solution is priced at $20,000 to $30,000 per year with no extra costs."
"We pay an annual fee based on the number of VPUs. It's fairly reasonable. We're in the middle of analyzing other products, and they're all pretty much in the same range."
"The pricing is based on how many cores are used and the type of cores."
"Licensing depends upon the package you opt for within the solution. The solution is a bit costly compared to the other integration tools in the market."
"Pricing is a little bit on the higher side because they give you the best support. Out of ten, I would rate pricing at seven or eight."
"They have a good pricing system, in relation to powerful features."
"The tool is expensive because of its rich features."
"Most of the challenges that I had with this solution were for smaller customers. There is not a good licensing model or pricing model. It is more expensive than other solutions, and that's the downside of MuleSoft. I had to be creative to be able to sell it to the business, but we did. This is something they have to work on because for large companies, it's affordable, but for small and medium businesses, it's very hard to sell."
"The solution is expensive."
"The various features and components for this solution are no longer free."
"This product is cheaper than some offered by other vendors, although there is a problem because you have to pay for some third-party adapters."
"The pricing must be improved."
"I think the price is very high. If you use TIBCO BW, the license is for the CPU usage, then the IPS, and support. I also think the license for the product is a one-time expense."
"Mule ESB is an expensive solution."
"This product is expensive, but it does offer value for money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM B2B Integrator?
IBM B2B Integrator is a great tool, robust, reliable, low-maintenance, and ideal solution.
What needs improvement with IBM B2B Integrator?
It supports many of our use cases but falls short in some areas as technology evolves, especially with data transfer ...
What do you like most about IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services?
The product's most valuable feature is the real-time integration suite.
What needs improvement with IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services?
IBM Sterling B2B Integration Services does not have specific issues that need improvement. While each product, like S...
Migration from IBM Integration Bus to Mulesoft ESB for a large enterprise tech services company
I was previously part of the Oracle SOA/OSB development team. In my current capacity I architected solutions using Mu...
IBM Integration Bus vs Mule ESB - which to choose?
Our team ran a comparison of IBM’s Integration Bus vs. Mule ESB in order to determine what sort of ESB software was t...
What do you like most about Mule ESB?
The solution's drag-and-drop interface and data viewer helped us quite a lot.
 

Also Known As

IBM Sterling B2B Integrator, Sterling Gentran Integration Suite
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bonnie Plants, Toshiba Europe, Florida Hospital
Information Not Available
Ube, PacificComp, University of Witwatersrand, Justice Systems, Camelot
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