IBM B2B Integrator Reviews

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.

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.

• It has a number of different components that can fit together.
• People can use or not use certain things.
• It integrates with some of the tools like IBM Transformation Extender.
• It is a B2B gateway rather than just an EDI translator.

They have modernized the solution recently and added some things. EDI translators have been around for a long time, so they've added things like advanced coms and global mail-boxing to make it much more real-time and with high availability. It is a good value.

Visibility would probably be the most important thing, so I can see the transactions points through and start to do some analytics from them.

I think it's pretty stable. It needs some additional things like visibility. That's why we look to partners who provide that kind of visibility. That is something that could be changed.

The product is stable. There are some things that they can do to enhance it, to make it a little bit more stable in terms of visibility of transactions.

The scalability is pretty good. It scales pretty well.

I have used technical support. Sometimes, it's hard to get through to the right people. It takes some time. My questions tend to be beyond level one, so I may really need to get to the higher levels of support. That can take some time and it can be a little frustrating.

Be careful with the visibility. I think they are going in the right direction in a lot of things. Depending on the transformation that you need, we've got that built-in to the Sterling B2B product, which is good for basic transformation and mapping, but anything advanced would probably need Transformation Extender.

When selecting a vendor, I look for company stability and the direction of the product.

I know a lot of tools in this area have kind of been around for a long time and they didn't really change that much. IBM has done a lot to modernize it a fair bit, so it's been a pretty important bit.

Make sure you are keeping up with changes in the industry.

It is a decent solution and it has room for improvement.

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.

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 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.

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.