It is important to talk with your consultant before implementing the solution. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

I would rate IBM B2B Integrator a nine out of 10. It's a great product. It's highly stable, and the redundancy is amazing. B2B Integrator also has a high availability option to work in a cluster environment. You rarely have issues operating it because of the HA. The only problem is support. When something goes wrong, you sometimes have to find the answers yourself on the internet. But overall, after working with it for 10 years, I can say it's been great to work with and learn to use

I would rate this solution as seven out of ten, due to the lack of visibility and mapping.

I recommend IBM B2B Integrator only if they have an alternate API-based B2B solution. It is a very robust product but unsuitable for API integration.

Overall, I rate it a seven out of ten.

I recommend the solution for mid to large-scale companies but not small-scale companies. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

Maintaining the solution is not a challenging task, provided that the person responsible for it possesses a thorough understanding of the operating system, such as Windows, Linux, AIX, database, and application. Therefore, the level of difficulty or ease in maintaining the solution depends on the capabilities and expertise of the maintainer or support personnel. 

There are instances where an individual may work with a solution for ten years without acquiring much knowledge beyond basic login and logout procedures. In contrast, someone else may work for only a year and acquire a comprehensive understanding of all the intelligent features within the solution. Therefore, the level of expertise is not necessarily dependent on the duration of work experience, but rather on the individual's ability and willingness to learn.

My clients use this solution because it is from IBM and of its strong partnership compliance standards, such as AS2. Additionally, IBM works with other vendors to ensure that the solution's functionality and compliance are kept up-to-date. This is a value-added service that other solution vendors do not offer.

My advice to others is they should undergo some training before using the solution.

I rate IBM B2B Integrator a nine out of ten.

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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. 

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I would definitely recommend this product.

Make sure that you always have the IBM support because being a big product, when getting exposed to the outside world all the time, it has a lot of vulnerabilities that come with it.

It's a great product and should go for it. It will make money for your bank.

The most important criteria while selecting a vendor are costs and stability.

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.

Plan your requirements, understand what it is you're trying to accomplish, or where you want to go, and then fit the solution to that. Don't try to figure things out first, or just build solutions.

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."

Get a Sterling expert. Without that, the product might not be successful.

I recommend it.

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.

If they are looking for a B2Bi solution, and I'm assuming that solution also will leverage some of the cognitive strengths of Watson, it's an awesome B2Bi solution. If anybody has a B2Bi business case, this is definitely one of the solutions, a mature solution in the market that they can consider.

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.

You have to look at a lot of factors such as:

• Scalability
• High availability
• Disaster recovery
• Usability
• Performance

Just do your homework. That's all it boils down to. Every vendor and every customer is going to be different, depending on their host system.

Really look at what your business needs are and make sure that your business needs and the tool that you are purchasing fits those needs. Just because you've used it in the past, just because you know somebody who's used it in the past, doesn't mean it's a good solution for you. It has to be something that fits the business needs. Where's your business going? What are your future needs? You have to think out of the box. You can't stay in the box in this environment because it is constantly growing and evolving.

I would rate IBM B2B Integrator at six on a scale from one to ten.

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.

We're a reseller.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten overall. In general, it's a very good solution. 

In summary, this is a good product but I would prefer one that requires less code.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.