End-to-end Integration with IBM Sterling B2B Integration and Managed File Transfer solutions  (English, Paperback, Gianluca Meloni)

Across numerous vertical industries, enterprises are challenged to improve processing efficiency as transactions flow from their business communities to their internal systems and vice versa, simplify management and expansion of the external communities, accommodate customer and supplier preferences, govern the flow of information, enforce policy and standards, and protect sensitive information. Throughout this process, external partners must be on-boarded and off-boarded, information must flow across multiple communications infrastructures, and data must be mapped and transformed for consumption across multiple applications.

Some transactions require synchronous or real-time processing while others are of a more periodic nature. For some classes of customer or supplier, the enterprise might prefer a locally-managed, on-premise solution. For some types of communities (often small businesses), an as-a-Service solution might be the best option. Many large enterprises combine the on-premise and as-a-Service approach to serve different categories of business partners (customers or suppliers).

This IBM® Redbooks® publication focuses on solutions for end-to-end integration in complex value chains and presents several end-to-end common integration scenarios with IBM Sterling and IBM WebSphere® portfolios.

We believe that this publication will be a reference for IT Specialists and IT Architects implementing an integration solution architecture involving IBM Sterling and IBM WebSphere portfolios.

About the Authors
James Ballentine is an Advisory Software Engineer for the IBM Sterling B2B Integrator Support Team, part of B2B Commerce Solutions of the IBM Industry Solutions group. He has worked as a support professional for IBM Sterling B2B Integrator for the past 7 years, 5 of which were spent as the team lead for the Database support team. Prior to joining this team, he had worked for nearly 10 years as a database administrator, designer, and developer in a variety of positions. He has extensive experience with RDBMS technologies, as well as various programming languages and associated technologies.

Claudemir Braghirolli works at Customer Support, IBM Software Group, Commerce based in São Paulo, Brazil, his native town. He has 19 years of experience with the products of IBM Sterling Connect:Direct family and 7 years of experience with IBM Sterling B2B Integrator. His areas of expertise include implementation and support of IBM Sterling Connect:Direct family products, support of IBM Sterling B2B Integrator, and development of applications under IBM Sterling B2B Integrator.

Vasfi Gucer is a Project Leader at the IBM International Technical Support Organization. He has been with the ITSO since January 1999. He has more than 12 years of experience in the areas of systems management, networking hardware, and software on mainframe and distributed platforms. He writes extensively and teaches IBM classes worldwide on IBM products. Vasfi is also an IBM Certified Senior IT Specialist, PMP, and ITIL Expert.

Rahul Gupta is an Advisory IT Specialist with IBM Global Technology Services in India. He is a Certified SOA Architect with 6 years of professional experience in IBM messaging technologies. At his current assignment, he works as a middleware consultant for various clients in North America. His core experiences are in lab testing, performance tuning, and Level 3 development for both WebSphere Message Broker and WebSphere MQ products. Rahul has been a technical speaker for messaging-related topics at various WebSphere conferences and is a recognized inventor by the IBM innovation community.

James B Herry is a Senior Managing Consultant, currently with IBM Software Services - Industry Solutions. He joined IBM in 2006 after working for 16 years as an application development professional, specializing in middleware integration. James graduated from Elon College in 1990 with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. Since joining IBM, he has specialized in helping clients in the financial and health care industries integrate WebSphere Transformation Extender into their middleware solutions, both as a solution architect and as an integration consultant.

Richard Kinard is the Product Manager for WebSphere DataPower Appliances. He is a subject matter expert in business-to-business (B2B) technologies and has over 12 years of experience designing, developing, and implementing B2B solutions. He has worked on many initiatives with Internet standards organizations to promote B2B interoperability and was a Senior Product Manager of a successful B2B application prior to working for IBM.

Gianluca Meloni is a Technical Support Analyst for IBM Industry Solutions, B2B Commerce, based in Italy. He has 11 years of experience in the B2B integration field. He holds a degree in mathematics from the University of Cagliari. His areas of expertise include IBM Sterling B2B Integrator, IBM Sterling File Gateway, IBM Sterling Connect:Direct and IBM Sterling Gentran:Server for UNIX. Originally from Sardinia, he is now home-based in Sanremo with hub office in Milan.

Bala Sivasubramanian is an IBM Certified Senior IT Specialist for IBM US SWG - Industry Solution Service, which focuses on Telecom, Media, and Entertainment. Previously, he worked in the IBM US GBS Wireless Practice as Senior IT Specialist and Integration Architect for the Tier 1 Service Providers in North America and has wide, international experience in the real world Telecom projects that involve complex integration solutions. His expertise includes a broad focus on the telecommunications industry. He has a deep knowledge of IBM tooling / product suite / Industry frameworks, IBM Telecom SDP & SPDE Framework, Parlay & TMF Standards, and OSS/BSS vendor product integration with IBM Web Sphere Middleware Products. He is the co-author for IBM Redbooks publications on the Telecommunication Industry Solution and is co-author for the IBM Certifications on the IBM Middleware and Tooling Products. He is also an IBM Certified Senior IT Specialist - Application Integration and Middleware and has 8+ IBM Product Certifications. Additionally, he holds a degree in Computer Science Engineering.

Eduardo Ribeiro de Souza is a Senior Solution Engineer and an architect to integration solutions such as Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), Business to Business Integration (B2Bi), Business Process Management (BPM), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), and composite applications. He has more than 15 years of experience in developing and integrating enterprise applications across a variety of industries.

He holds a Master’s degree in Production Engineering from Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil.

Frank Strecker is an Advisory IT Architect and Support Engineer in the European IBM Sterling B2B Integrator support team. Before joining IBM Industry Solutions support, he used to work as a WebSphere MQ and Message Broker Consultant in the German IBM Software Services for WebSphere team. After working hours, Frank teaches the Alexander Technique.

Gang Yin is a Product Developer in Sterling B2B China team, focusing on development and L3 support of Sterling B2B cloud services. His areas of expertise include WebSphere ESB, WebSphere Message Broker, and WebSphere DataPower appliances.