IBM B2B Integrator Reviews

The valuable feature is the ability to integrate across various enterprise systems. It's a very flexible tool. The way we have customized our solutions based on IBM Sterling B2B Integrator cannot be replicated by any other B2B vendor on the market right now.

One benefit is the flexibility. In our company, our bread and butter is a transportation system. We transport consumer product goods from Central America back to North America.

I would like to see the implementation of APIs into the solution mix. They are already working on this. I would like to see more capabilities to understand how easily APIs can connect and how they can be integrated with the existing B2B suite.

It is a pretty stable solution.

The only con of the scalability is that we are trying to see how we can scale to the cloud. It is not really clear at this point how this will occur with this solution. We don’t know how it will scale if we move to a hybrid, on-premise solution on the cloud. That's not really clear at this point. I am trying to learn precisely that.

I was not around when they chose the solution. At that point, I believe this was the best middle-of-the-road solution in the 2008-09 timeframe.

I was not part of the initial setup, but I was there during two subsequent upgrades of this solution. It is not something you actually plug and play. It's very complex and it actually requires a technical consultant. It's not something which is very easy.

The solution is very good for the traditional integration scenarios, such as point-to-point integrations. When you're looking to take the technology to the cutting edge, new age, digital, 21st-century, omni-channel kind of scenario, it still doesn’t make the cut.

When selecting a vendor, the most important factor is obviously the company size. This plays a role in the market. We go by the Gartner market leader recommendation. Anything on Gartner gets our "eyeballs."

From the scalability standpoint, not having to do upgrades is a valuable feature. It does provide that cloud-based offering for us, so that we don't need to support the back-end hardware.

It has helped improve the speed of delivery. Like I mentioned earlier, as far as not having to worry about scaling out, as we grow more trading or have more partners that come in, when we have to set up EDI with these folks. Now, we don't have to worry about issues such as if our environment is large enough or do we have to add or need to grow space and such things.

From my perspective and as per what I know, it needs more hardening of the environment and they need to make sure that there is less unscheduled downtime. 

It does solve our issues and problems. However, the main issue is around uptime and they should do as much as they can, so as to correct anything in regards to that.

The stability is good. We have experienced some issues with unexpected downtime from IBM Sterling. So for the most part it is good, but we have seen interruptions.

The scalability of this solution is really good.

Previously, we were using Gentran. They chose to take it out from being an on-site/on-prem solution to the cloud. So, for those very reasons that I have mentioned earlier, i.e., as far as not having to worry about the configuration, setup and management, are the main reasons as to why we switched to this solution.

The support, stability and being able to provide the proper solution are the key criteria while selecting a vendor.

Probably you just need to make sure, as you go through your contract, that your SLAs are accounted properly and you know what to expect with any potential downtime.

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 has a number of different components that can fit together. People can use it partially or fully. It also integrates with some of the mounting tools like IBM Transformation Extender and it's a B2B Gateway rather than just a BDI translator.

They've modernized the solution recently and added some things where BDI translators have been around for a long time, and they've added things like advanced coms and global mailboxing to make it much more real-time with higher availability. So it's good value for our organization.

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

Sterling B2B Integrator is a transactional tool to manage the flow of EDI centric transactions to and from your trading partners. It also works with an add-on product called ITX Advanced (ITXA).

As transactions flow through, the users would like to see the status if each of the transactions, or an analytic view of a number of transactions. For example, a user might say “tell me how many EDI claims failed validation today or this week?” Or how much order volume in terms of dollars was processed today?

I had that request from a VP of Sales when I was an EDI Coordinator. He would come by every day and ask “have we hit $1M yet in orders today?” He was not technical, and wouldn’t be able to run queries on a database, for example, so if the tool could give a dashboard with the transaction totals, both in physical transactions (i.e. 15,783 POs today) as well as business level information (those PO’s totaled $1.3M in orders, or $450,883 for product A, and $78,932 for product B, etc.), that would be valuable to business users.

Some of IBM’s partners, like Lightwell and CoEnterprise, have been building these dashboards as part of their offering as they have seen a gap in the IBM product.

For example, CoEnterprise offers a solution called Syncrofy to do this.

It's pretty stable.

It scales pretty well.

Sometimes it's hard to get through to the right people in support. It takes some time. My questions tend to be beyond Level 1, so I may need to get to the higher levels of support which can take some time and be a little frustrating.

It was already in place when I got here. I know a lot of tools in this area have been around for a long time and they didn't really change that much. IBM has modernized it a fair bit so you make sure you're keeping up with changes in the industry.

I would say to be careful with the visibility. I think they're going in the right direction in a lot of ways, depending on the transformation that you need. We've got a built-in to the Sterling B2B product, which is good for basic transformation and mapping, but anything advanced would probably require something superior.

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 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.

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.

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.