IBM B2B Integrator Reviews

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.

We use B2B Integrator to collect files locally and send them to external business partners, like the national banks. For example, the company regularly sends financial reports to the national central bank. In short, it's for data exchange between companies. I previously worked for an automotive company, and we used B2B Integrator to exchange data with the parts supplier.

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.

The user interface is outdated. B2B Integrator was developed in the United States in the nineties, and the graphical user interface hasn't improved since. It's tough because you have to program the software in XML. Nowadays, other methods are easier to work with. Programming the system is challenging. However, it's not a shortcoming for me. I think it would help if they had more documentation, too. 

I've been using B2B Integrator for about 10 years.

I would rate B2B Integrator eight out of 10 for performance but 10 out of 10 for stability. 

B2B Integrator is highly scalable. I give it a 10 out of 10 for scalability. 

IBM support is another one of B2B Integrator's advantages. Support is crucial for large enterprises, and this is a product primarily used in big corporations.

I have some experience with a similar product called Axway File Gateway, but not too much. Axway is easier to set up. Apart from that, I'd say that they're more or less the same program. Nonetheless, I would still go for IBM because the aftersales service of Axway needs some improvement.

The initial deployment is very complex. I would rate it 10 out of 10 for complexity. The installation itself is pretty straightforward, it's hard to configure the business flows, and it takes a lot of time. 

The programming interface is old. You need to program everything in XML and XSLT, and that's an old-fashioned way to do things. It took me an entire year to fully deploy the system in a corporation of 60,000 employees. We're talking about 20,000 files a day. We have a team for deployment and maintenance, but the product doesn't require much maintenance — only regular updates. For updates and releases, the product manages itself. 

B2B Integrator is expensive, but it's worth it. I rate the price 10 out of 10 for the most expensive, but it's also the best product for what it does. The only additional cost is the support contract.  

I rate B2B Integrator nine out of 10. If you are implementing B2B Integrator, you should have good programmers and a solid system administration team. It's also better to outsource the system setup.

The IBM B2B Integrator is going to be a middleware point of contact for us. It's helping us in terms of file transfer communication. There is a file gateway, which is built on B2B Integrator, which allows us to build out some custom protocols based on our requirements. That would be any of the use cases; FTP, SFTP, S2 and all kinds of communications.

I believe that the translation part is the best thing, with which we can do a lot of custom business processes. It will help us to build a translation specific to our partner, specific to our port, or specific to EDA testings. It's going to help us a lot in translations, especially in terms of converting the standard EDA documents to the internal file formats or vice versa (back to EDA).

I started working as a developer and now, I'm a solution architect. All this while, I have been using it, for over 13 years; this is a great tool.

There's a lot still to be improved in the component, as there are many challenges in terms of B2B tools. One of the challenges was on the Sterling side, since I love to have translations with XLS. So, if you have a Word document and an XLS file, then there is no conversion right now, which is a standard way of doing it. It's not happening anywhere in the world, i.e., anywhere in the B2B tools, so I'd love to have that kind feature soon.

I've been working on this tool for the past 13 years.

The stability of the solution totally depends upon a company and as to what they are looking at the moment. Right now, we are looking at the Sterling B2B solution, so it is good.

The scalability is also good.

The technical support is good. We just have to be conscious on the escalation part, i.e., if it's a Level 1 or Level 2. Otherwise, they are good and prompt.

Previously, we were using Mercator, which is now acquired by IBM and now known as IBM WTX/IBM ITX.

We did a market research and then found out that this is going to be the less expensive solution, in terms of the cost, as compared to the other products.

When selecting a vendor, we just want the vendor to be flexible and who can go with a lot of iterations; and the cost; and then who has the technical capabilities; and then who is very strong in communicating things; and being fair in terms of the cost. We have a lot of issues in terms of dealing with the vendors, since their billing prices are very high.

We chose IBM because it's a great tool and is going to support us to do a lot of internal completion of the translation piece. Also, cost-wise, it's less compared to the other products.

Right now, we have Shree Consulting and we have Lightwell our short list; that's all I know.

It can do everything. Now that IBM is acquiring the ITX/ WTX, it's going to be a next generation tool. As long you add some capabilities to it, it's going to be good solution.

You should go for it!

The product is easily transportable - it'll go to any platform. We can make any business, an electronic commerce business in no time at all. We have enough experience with the software itself so that a company can go out and buy the IBM product, hook that company up with us, we can put the software they need on it, and they can be in business in two shakes of a lamb's tail.

Well perhaps an easier way of getting questions answered would be useful. The emailing of questions into IBM's site for Sterling support works but it would be nicer if we had more. The knowledge base does leave a little bit to be expected.

I don't see that it needs anything more. It does everything just the way it is right now. There is a lot of years of development back from when Sterling was an independent company, before IBM took over. They formed a niche and we have it.

The stability is unbelievably good and we have a Sterling hotline for all of our Sterling questions. They're very responsive. IBM is a little bit of a cumbersome thing in front of it, but we know how to get out around that and it works out very well. What happens is a customer that spends $1,000,000 in their budget, they get support all the time as they need it and the company itself doesn't have to be technically savvy. All they need to do is interface with our company, Sea Level Solutions, and they have everything they need to keep business running.

It can go any size. It's a little bit expensive for a mom-and-pop shop, but again, IBM will be having much smaller packages, which will be more affordable.

I am technical support. I am like first and second line, if I don't know it I can usually get on a phone call to someone who can get me answers within a reasonable length of time, 6-12 hours.

I supported another product from TSI Software back in the 90s when Gentran
Basic was being developed.

I rated it a nine because there is always a little bit of room for improvement.

I would advise colleagues to find a way to be able to utilize this product because it would give them everything they need and then some because it's just it's a very versatile product.

The key features that you would expect from the solution are:

• The communications and the protocols: The communication is very critical for any B2B product, especially for EDI commerce activities.
• The protocols and standards that are supported.
• The transformation leg, which is the transaction confirmation.
• The business process orchestration around the inbound and outbound transactions.

In this particular space, Sterling B2B Integrator has been the number one solution in the marketplace.

When you go across the country, you see this solution the majority of the time. You don't even have to think about it. That's how dominant that product is. This is what used to be called Gentran. It started off on the mainframe and now it is running on almost all the platforms.

Of course, there are a couple of competitors in the marketplace. However, when it comes to stability, performance, standards, and the breadth of the support in various countries, this is an awesome solution.

The benefits are in terms of the two most critical sides of the business: the buy side and the sell side.

This has become the de facto standard. It helps in the supply chain optimization problems. There are still a lot of customers who still are using paper-based transaction processing. Some still are using faxes, but this is the way to go.

Even though API management has become so popular, corporate businesses are still going on API.

Visibility is really a cool thing. There's a built-in Sterling Control Center, which provides great visibility for all the different things.

It's not only about visibility. It's about acting on an alert or acting on a critical situation that might be failing.

For example, if I have some SLAs and if I'm not going to meet them, I want to be alerted ahead of time, not after the fact. That's one of the good capabilities that this product has.

There have been a couple of issues that we have raised in terms of scalability and high availability. IBM has responded back with the next-generation product and new features like the global mailbox and a couple of other things, which are pretty cool. We would like to use the same product without having to go for the add-on products.

This product has been in the marketplace for such a long time. The current version, 5.24, has been very stable for the last year and a half. The 5.26 version is a very simple upgrade.

It is pretty scalable and stable. Scalability and stability are both perfect, spot on.

There are times when we call IBM support, especially for the new releases. They are pretty good at responding. It's all about how you interact with them, and how quickly can you provide all the details about your product, your version, and the log files.

A lot of times, customers have issues.

Customer: "I have a problem."

Technical support: "What is the problem?"

Customer: "This is my problem. My translation is not happening."

Technical support: "What version?"

There is this constant dialogue that is going back and forth. If the customer can provide all that information in one shot as technical support is logging the ticket, then that will speed it up and you can get a resolution quickly.

The other challenge is that customers say that the problem is mission-critical, but they don't have the person available to address the issue. The customer has to make sure that there is somebody to receive and handle the call so they can get a resolution within 24 hours.

The previous solutions had challenges. A lot of the customers came to us saying they wanted a new standard and what they had was failing. They said, "We need a better platform and we need something which has lots of enterprise trust."

We evaluated Microsoft and OpenText. Sterling is the best.

When selecting a vendor, I look for company stability, the product, and the depth of experience. Those are the things that really matter.

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 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 processes 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.

It is easy of use and it's easy to maintain. It's also faster to on-board partners.

It has ended invisibility, which is not there any more. That's a big implement for any solution.

There are a couple of issues which could be improved. One is the outcome of the ITXA integration on installation. We need better visibility around code lists. There is the handling of code lists and API calls to support partial update of any interfaces, training partner management, all of which is not there today. Their integration with ICCs is only limited to ADI, but it should be open for other formats.

Also, 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. I think that's pretty much what I would like to say.

I have used the solution for the past 15 years.

Stability is still not where it's supposed to be. There is always a challenge when we upgrade things and improve on new versions.

Scalability is great.

For my company, I would say the technical support is about 9/10. The only hesitation I have is the inability for IBM to understand the customer's need, and improve their product. Our requests were not responded to in a timely manner and the announcement was not done the way ABC would have benefited from it. But the majority of our concerns were addressed on time.

We were already an IBM shop but not to the newest technologies. So we ran into the situation where our systems were not as scalable. We didn't have end to end visibility, which became a key part of our business functions because we need to get into all the solutions.

We wanted to make sure that we have a single integrated application, which can fulfill the need of all the backend applications. Looking at the current solution to improve that was costlier. So we decided to go with an out-of-the-box solution from IBM, and that's where we are.

The complete setup is always complex. Any new setup you do is not always straightforward, it takes months. So there are two aspects to consider here. One is the installation part and one is configuration to make it work.

Installation was simple and straightforward. But the configuration to tune the system to make it function the way it was intended to, wasn't known up-front. For instance with regard to clustering issues we ran into when we were in production. If we would have known that up-front, it would have saved us time and energy in the chaotic situation we were in. Those sort of challenges could have been improved if we had known it up-front.

There were a couple of criteria when selecting a vendor. We had four big players. We did compare, we had a demo on-site. We did POCs and RFCs. After four weeks of exercise, we selected IBM.

The key challenge is that the Sterling Integrator has been there in this industry for more than two decades. There are key loopholes, or I would say there are low-hanging issues with the Sterling Integrator, and they could have all been improved.

Unparalleled, they try to invest energy to integrate with other applications of IBM products. The key essential part of what you are doing should be focused and unparalleled. I know it takes time. There are a lot of other fears being raised by lots of customers.

I have been a user for Sterling Integrator for the last 15 years. So it's not the first one for me and I see the same problems as all the clients. If those would improve, this would become best of breed.

There are also other challenges on the visibilities. Right now there are at least 10 to 15 players in the market, which build solutions using Sterling Integrator as a backbone. So why not IBM? If we have that as a single source of truth, we can install it in-house.

Whatever industry or company, it doesn't matter. Depending on their need, Sterling Integrator is still a big framework for anyone who is looking to integrate their backend applications which are in legacy mode today, and their point to point applications. If they really want to have this type of application, well it's scalable and Sterling Integrator is still the solution.

I have been a speaker here for Sterling Integrator, and I think IBM already has at least four or five prospects here. They're talking to me to understand how we did at ABC. So I'm helping them to get to us.

It's one of the super solutions today.