IBM B2B Integrator Reviews

There are many benefits of this product.

One unique instance was when the transaction mapping and transmissions both happened in the same application.

We were able to translate the transaction from X12 to the application and vice versa. We were also able to communicate with the internal as well as the external application, i.e., with various up-to-date protocols available in the market.

The IBM B2B Integrator tool, as the name suggests, can be used to manage your trading partner's community and connections centrally, from one single application.

With the most recent releases of this product, the installation and administration have become much more complex.

After SI v5.2.4 there are major changes happened to the product with some new features and capabilities., which in turn are good. With features like advance communication, High Availability etc. installation and management of the tool has become little complex. Introduction of installation manager was not a conventional method of B2Bi installation. Everything comes with the price. If you want your infrastructure to be up to date and available all the time, Complexity is something you have to take up with it.

I would like to see that more simplified for the users.

I have used this solution for more than 10 years now. I still think its pretty good and up to the date solutions for many but not limited to MFT, EDI etc.solutions

We have not experienced any major issues in terms of the stability. There is continuous support that we receive from IBM.

There were no scalability issues.

The technical support is excellent, as long as you are covered with your contract.

I was not involved in the initial setup, as it was done in 2005. However, I was part of the upgrade many times. As we are moving forward, it has started to become a complex procedure.

The pricing is a bit on the higher side for a small organization. If you have a large organization and have scope for using other IBM products, then you have a chance to negotiate with them.

We did not evaluate any other products before the choosing this one.

During the upgrade, we gave a thought to the Oracle Managed File Transfer (MFT) solution for the same purpose.

You should evaluate your business, as the statistics play an important role in deciding about this product. If you study the requirements in detail, then you will reduce the chances of failure quite a bit.

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.

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.

Both data transmission and data transformation are the two very, very critical features of this application.

We use a Sterling B2B Integrator file transfer management solution; a B2B solution, or like an EDI solution. As a pharma company, we deal with a lot of external trading partners. It can be suppliers or EDI partners, where we exchange all the data. So when we are exchanging the data, we have to keep to certain standards. In North America, we use the ANSI X12 standard, where data is converted from one format to another and then sent out to the trading partners. We use Sterling Integrator to do the data transformation, as well as data transmission to send the files off to them. This application supports various communication protocols, like FTPS. Sometimes the vendors are not really tech savvy, because you're talking about a scientist who is not really tech savvy. For them, we provide a URL where they can simply log in using their credentials and upload their research files. This is the application that we use to route the files.

When it comes to data transformation, it's very flexible. It allows us to convert from any format to any format, such as from CSV to XML, or flat file to positional, or whatever. And the fact that it supports a good number of communication protocols make it easy because most of the customers don't feel comfortable using FTP or open protocols. This gives us the file technology to support web services. On both ends, it's the flexibility that makes it stand out from the others.

I would like more visibility, because IBM has partnered with other companies that sell frameworks. So I thought if IBM can invest more on providing that visibility, having us install a third-party framework, would be a nice feature that IBM could seriously think about.

We never had any major stability issues, to be frank. We had only one issue that was more in the infrastructure, but the system has been stable for a pretty long time. We haven't had a need to upgrade the system because it was that stable. The only issue is that in the current version that we are on, one of the security features is not available. In order to get new features that are available, we are thinking about upgrading. But, other than that, from the stability standpoint, it's pretty stable; no issues at all.

We have already installed it on a four-node cluster, so it's pretty scalable. Down the line, if there is a need, we can simply add two more nodes without complicating it. We could definitely scale it, so that's not a big deal.

We have been acquired by another company, so we already have quite a few technologies that we use for the same thing. Even for EDI, we have TIBCO and Sterling B2B. For file transfer management, we use TIBCO Business Connect and Axway Secure Transport and Sterling Integrator. So, I think we are better placed to asses which is working better. So when we gauged them, we found the Sterling Integrator is really flexible and is able to support a lot of business use cases when compared with the other technologies.

When selecting a vendor, meeting our business needs, not only the current needs but also the future needs, would be the critical thing for us. If the current needs are met but you're unable to meet the future needs, then there is no point in selecting an application that is meeting the current needs but down the line we have to look for another alternative solution. It's such a big company and we don't know what kind of requirements are coming up. So, we have these periodic sessions to get an understanding of what is coming our way. Then we asses whether we could meet those needs or not. So, that's the reason why we proceeded with the procuring of Aspera, which is used for large file transfers in terms of like, terabytes or petabytes.
So that's a solution that we use that was acquired by IBM two or three years ago. So this is what happens when we get to know what's coming our way and we know IBM or the Sterling Integrator is not used for large file transfers, we may pull out another solution that would handle that.

I was involved in the setup. I'm the one who designed it. It was pretty straightforward.

It's a case-by-case basis, so advice depends on what your needs are and what you're looking for. But if you're looking for something like data transmission and transformations, then yes, this is an ideal solution. But, if you're looking for large file transfers, then Sterling B2B is not the one. Another IBM product like Aspera is the right one. It totally depends on upon what kind of use cases you are trying to handle.

One of the most valuable features in IBM Sterling B2B Integrator would be the ease of self-service. We previously had a competitor for our file transfer and IBM Sterling B2B Integrator is what we have migrated to. It makes transparency into the transactions a lot better than our old legacy product. There are a lot more self-service options, especially with File Gateway. It has a lot more capabilities in terms of scalability and adaptability, so that we can use IBM Sterling B2B Integrator to scale to our growth, whereas the old platform we could not.

The breadth of APIs is something that I would like to see improved. At a recent IBM conference, I was going to a hands-on lab about the APIs and the Sterling solution, and I would love to see them expand upon that. We use IBM Control Center and they have a lot of work to do with their APIs. You can't make a single call to get all the information you want on a file status, on a transfer status. I would love to see them improve both in their IBM Sterling B2B Integrator, File Gateway, and control center, the use of APIs and I guess the options that you can have with them.

Out of 10, I would give stability a seven, only because I think in IBM Sterling B2B Integrator, there are still some bugs. We have a secure proxy, perimeter servers, IBM Sterling B2B Integrator and the File Gateway. When you do full restarts for refreshes or maintenance, when you bring them back up, you can't do an SI restart cleanly without also doing the proxy. You have to do everything as kind of a package restart. Otherwise, you'll get some crazy things happening with the adapters. Now, that is on a 5.2.5 version. We're going to go to 5.2.6 in a couple months here. We’re hoping they eliminate that and we have our IBM lab advocate that works closely with us to address our concerns.

Scalability is great. We future planned when we implemented the Sterling solution so that we could match 10-year growth and right now, we're underutilizing the environment. We've done 1x, 2x, 3x, even 5x testing on it. It still holds up to a 5x test, whereas our legacy platform couldn't even match the 1x that we currently are running.

We use technical support all the time. I'd probably rate them probably another seven out of 10. They always help us with our solutions in a quick manner. However, probably more than half the time, it's “Just wait for the next fix pack to have your thing resolved.” We open up PMRs with IBM all the time. I'd say we have several hundred by now.

The back and forth with, “Can you send me this log?”, “Now, can you send me that log?”, and “Can you send me this log?”; it would be helpful if, when you open up a PMR based upon certain applications, they tell you which kind of logs that they look for. That way, when you open up your PMR, you can attach those logs based on that product, like IBM Sterling B2B Integrator. And that way, you're not doing this back and forth for a week straight of, “OK, now I need this log and that log, and this log and that log.”

We knew we needed to invest in this solution because our previous legacy platform was fully customized. We were out of date on the server, on the version of the product, and roughly 80% was custom scripted with Perl scripts that we had to support in-house. We needed a solution that we actually could go to support for, if there were any issues, and not rely on a couple of people who wrote a bunch of Perl scripts.

I was not involved in the initial setup. However, I have been involved in all the server refreshes, so I've had to actually set up the environment from scratch on new servers. I find it to be pretty straightforward for 5.2.5.

For 5.2.6, we've done some test runs and it's a little bit harder with installation manager now. I never had to do installation manager of 5.2.5 but I think once you get that down, it's not too bad. And once you get installation manager installed, it appears that upgrading after that is a lot easier than before.

Before choosing this product, I think my company evaluated a total of five vendors. Out of the five, IBM beat out the other four. Since I wasn't there for the initial setup, I'm not sure of the other vendors.

For our company, the biggest thing when we’re selecting a vendor would be partnership in the service level contracts. If there is a previous relationship, that's even better. We're very closely integrated with IBM, so there is a lot of partnership and service level credits and contracts already in place. That was probably one of the biggest drivers of why we went with an IBM solution.

We actually have several meetings with other colleagues at other companies who want to implement this solution and we tell them some of our pain points, some of our success stories and overall that it's the right move if the company can afford it, because I know that IBM is not always the cheapest. But it is worth the investment to have a product that is the best in the market, and overall more stable and more scalable.

My rating reflects that there's a lot more work to do. Still, compared to other products, our legacy platform, it still outperforms them.

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.

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. 

The IBM Sterling B2B Integrator is a very good B2B tool which has required services and adapter to handle B2B requests. Having this variety of adapters help us handle all most all requests from our customers.

We are able to handle the request which were not able to handle before with Trusted Link translator. We are able to built custom processes, even edit out of the box business process to make them work how we wanted to track information for our end to end visibility.

There is no end-to-end built in visibility at least until we moved to IBM managed services.

Able to test processes in debug mode.

Able to test processes from local machines.

12 years

The product is very stable. We use version 5.2. We used 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 as well. It was previously Gentran Integration Suite and then it was branded as IBM Sterling B2B Integrator. Version 5.2 is stable.

The scalability is good. We had the right hardware as per recommendations.

There are three types of issues. Simple, medium and complex. For simple issues we were able to find some answers from Knowledge base. For medium issues we used to raise tickets with L1 where some of them are solved or we get L2 involved. For complex issues we hit L3 and it many end up as product enhancement request sometimes. Critical & Complex issues used to take some time to get on to same page, recreate it at IBM environment and come with a resolution. I would give them a rating of 8 out of 10.

We didn’t use technical support for the solution because we had a good team coming from AS/400 background. We were mainly focusing on issues when something didn't work. We got help for the following:

• Hardware requirements.
• Installations.
• Patch installations.
• Some of the key functionality, in terms of certain adapters and how they work.
• Guidance when we were trying to understand how an adapter works in detail.

Yes, we had Trusted link translator V2 and V6 which are no match with respective to functionality we get from IBM sterling integrator so that was the reason we switched.

This is a good tool for a person who already understands the B2B concepts. You will have to build the base framework first and then start onboarding customer interfaces otherwise you will end up with too many customer interface to handle down the line.