SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite Reviews

It's our EDI translator. We use it daily, it's on-prem. It's SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) 6 and we've been using it for eight or nine years.

We run 60 to 75 different customers, large OEMs which have between five and 15 different sites each, and every site could be a $100 million to $200 million company with its own computer system, its own EDI. In essence, our 60 to 75 customers are really several hundred customers, all sending different EDI data to us.

We use the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) platform to translate sales orders or sales schedules or planning schedules into EDI data that our ERP system can ingest. When we, in many cases, ship daily to these customers, we take our shipping data and send them an ASN and an invoice all translated through the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) 6 software. I'd estimate it's in the hundreds of shipments per day.

It's a standard inbound gateway and a standard outbound process and it does everything we need it to do.

They were a strategic partner of the Infor Global Solutions and were a recommended EDI solution, ten years ago, for the ERP software we use from Infor called Baan.

It seems to be a very powerful mapping tool and we haven't found that it can't do what we need it to do in the EDI world, and that world is quite daunting when you think of all these customers, these OEMs, with legacy systems that have unique requirements. SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) mapper can handle it because it's very powerful with logic built in.

The solution is very stable.

In terms of scalability, that's why we're going to the cloud, so we have global scale. In and of itself, I could do many more hundreds of customers through the on-prem solution, but that's not where my company's growth is. We want to use this same solution in Asia and not have something different feeding the factories there, so that's why we are moving to the cloud offering.

We use their consultant services and they're excellent.

We used their competitor. This product does the same thing that the previous product did, ten years ago. But the competitor said they were going to stop doing business and supporting the Baan ERP system. So we had to switch and we selected SEEBURGER because they were a recommended EDI partner with Baan software. We migrated all of our EDI maps to SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS), from their competition, and then we had to modify them, ever so slightly, to get them to work.

I'm sure the product is set up in a straightforward way. The maps that we set up per customer or per customer's site are all customized. That's where the complexity is. The complexity is the not in the product. There is certainly a learning curve for becoming an expert mapper and using the tool to do the maps, but the software in and of itself is not complicated.

We did our deployment gradually because we couldn't handle the "big bang," so we did it in six to nine months. We had all those maps in existence in another tool and we had to migrate them and then get them all working individually. We had several hundred maps to do and we did them over six to nine months. Our strategy was a slow cut-over as we tested each map using the new software.

We used SEEBURGER training directly.

The pricing seems to be competitive and the maintenance is standard.

We went with the preferred, recommended EVI translator that Infor recommended.

We are now considering using the SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) solution, the exact same one, in the SEEBURGER Cloud, meaning we are not going to have it on-prem and we're going to have them do the transport and the translation to us and then send the EDI data, so we don't have to manage the server on-premise. It's the same basic concept but it's slightly more robust having them manage the maintenance of the system.

We are 99 percent sure we're moving to their cloud and that would give us the stability and scalability that we need, so we can have that same process work globally and not just be reliant on our one on-premise instance. The strategy of moving to their cloud is for both of those reasons. So the product in and of itself, on-prem, does not give you that, but the same product, in their data centers around the world, allows me to do the same functions but where I need it. We're going to the cloud in the next three to six months because of scalability, because of global reach, and standardization.

We have one user of the software and their role is the mapping development and the day-to-day coordination of changes. They monitor the flow in and make changes as needed, based on customer maps: a new map request, a new customer, or new sites. That same person also does the maintenance and the deployment. I'm looking to have the same tool globally and I will be able to contract people to do it in Asia, since they speak a different language. I will contract SEEBURGER consultants to do that for me.

I don't know if we're using the Landscape Manager and I don't think we take advantage of any Active-Active in terms of handling larger loads, as we have one instance. It's not multiple and it's not their Cloud Services, it's the on-prem SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) 6 platform.

In terms of its flexibility, when it comes to adding integrations, it's not that kind of setup for us. We don't integrate into SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS). We use the tools and the mapping, Workbench, as it's presented, and send the EDI information off to our ERP system. We don't take advantage of integrations.

I would rate it at eight out of ten because the current tool is planned to be moved to the cloud so we are not looking to switch. We are looking to scale it globally, so we are pretty happy with it.

• We use it for handling partner setup, dealing with XML, EDI transactions, and mapping.
• We can do job scheduling, process designing, AS2, FTP, and SFTP setup in it.
• We can use it to script and monitor processes.

Benefit of Seeburger to GenTran (which we most recently had): In GenTran, if any batches had incorrect data, whole batches got errored out. While in Seeburger, only that particular data gets impacted. It allows other batches to flow.

• One solution for all integration.
• Fault tolerance. We rarely get hanged processes. Therefore, it is reliable.
• We can code in Java, which is really good feature. There is very vast command available, which can be used in mapping.

Difficult in handling large amounts of data, like when the file has more than 100MB in size. Therefore, our organization had to purchase another server to deal with this.

I would like there to be a feature that could handle the limited server.

We recently migrated from the GenTran mapping tool to Seeburger.

The ease-of-use is absolutely amazing. What I mean is that even if you’ve never worked with their software before, it’s very easy to understand and start working with it and move on to more complex things.

The ability to design and create your own business processes, tailored for your organization’s needs, can be done with the BPM designer.

You can also use your own conversion mappings through the BIC Mapping Designer, which is another piece of complementary software.

This really makes it a whole solution that is ready to satisfy any requirements that your organization might have.

A big improvement was that this platform allowed us to move away from paper data transfer to digital, even with partners who are not EDI ready. This occurred through the use of a partner portal that made the data easily available to them in a digital format.

The advantages of having everything digitalized are clear and they are covered in detail by all EDI solution vendors, so I’m not going to go into that.

Nothing comes to mind at the moment. I would describe it as a very robust solution which is oriented towards ease-of-use. It has small bugs, like any other software, but constant patches and feature add-ons are taking care of that.

The company I work for has been using this solution for six years already, and I have four years of experience with it.

We did have stability issues in the previous version of the software, BIS 6.3.5 Q4. But the newer platform hasn’t shown any issues so far.

At the moment, I would say that we’re not utilizing the platform’s full potential, so a question about scalability is not relevant.

Depending on who is helping you, the level of technical expertise will vary.

As far as the Seeburger consultants that I have dealt with from Seeburger HQ go, I would give them a rating of 8/10.

Frontline support, or first-level support though, gets a rating of 4/10. Most of the time, they seem to be very bad at understanding the critical nature of an issue and they rarely manage to fulfill their own SLAs.

We were using BIS 6.3.5 Q4. The switch was made in order to improve the stability of the solution, as well as to accommodate a higher workload. Also, that platform was reaching its EOL.

The initial setup was quite straightforward. Depending on the amount of data that you need to take with you from the EDI platform that you’re already using, Seeburger also provides consultancy services to help with the transition. Their documentation is easy to read and understand, making the platform easy to setup.

Definitely negotiate. Depending on the size of your organization, you can get some substantial benefits in terms of pricing or services.

Solutions from AMTrix and Microsoft were also taken into consideration.

Even if it’s a good product, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you need everything they offer. Make sure to test the platform out beforehand, as well as many other platforms, and try to find the one that best suits your present and future needs.

Partner connectivity and the process builder are the most valuable features.

• Partner Connectivity: This is the core value of the tool. It enables communication between two systems/business partners.
• Process builder: Helps us to customize the application to the needs/requirements of our customers.

It enables customization as per the organization's needs.

The connectivity of the Data Distribution Center (DDC) and the repository need improvement.

There were no stability issues.

We can integrate any custom Java program directly with Seeburger BIS Suite. Most of the components are loosely coupled.

It has helped our organization to integrate with different systems, by having different integration methods seamlessly.

The documentation can be improved.

I have used this solution for six years.

There were no stability issues, as such. Since this is a software solution, it may have bugs that get fixed, i.e., when we raise the necessary concern with the vendor.

This product is highly scalable.

I would give technical support a rating of 7/10.

We did migrate a few IBM Systems with the Seeburger, as the licensing cost is less and it gives the same flavor as the BIS Suite.

The setup was a little tricky, but the vendor always helped us with the installation.

This is the best product that there is in the market.

We evaluated TIBCO and Axway System Integrator (SI).

It is a great product to work with, especially with their new cloud solution. Companies do not have to worry about any in-house infrastructure.

• Ability to have one system that can handle any protocol: One of the strongest features
• No need to have multiple systems for different types of communication protocols
• The software can run on any platform: Makes it very flexible

We minimized our complexity and decreased the number of systems to communicate with our partners. These are the biggest advantages that yield cost savings.

Everything now is centralized. This platform is the gate to our suppliers and customers.

• The interface and logging of messages could be more simplified. Everything is in Java and uses hash codes or UUID codes. This sometimes makes it very hard to know what has happened or what issue you might have.
• They could fix their protocol adapters so they really work with each OEM. Although it is sold with the OEM tag, you have to configure it to make it work as required.
• They tend to release a lot of service packs throughout the year, always fixing bugs that other customers report. It is as though they are building the system as time moves forward and providing enhancements.
• Monitoring of the application is very poor. You have to make custom scripts to monitor what is really important.

I’ve been using the solution for seven years.

We had issues with stability. The system is not always stable and you could have a problem at any time without notice. I think they develop it more for Linux based platforms which I hear are stable. However, we are an AIX shop, unfortunately.

We didn't have any issues with scalability. The architecture of their software and solutions is very scalable on paper. If your network cannot handle their requirements, they will offer other ideas that will work. Thumbs up on that part.

Everything is done though a ticket system. It works with a few ping-pongs of emails. The support team is knowledgeable about their product and they are always looking to help you.

During an emergency, however, I would expect:

• A higher level of support
• Help from someone who can speak English very well
• Assistance from someone who is in our own time zone: The support center is centralized

Prior to our SAP installation, we had a simple system to send data though a product called ECQ from Compuware. That product no longer exists, as far as I know. It was not very robust in terms of where we were headed in the future.

The training you receive is not that great. A lot of it is self-taught. They could do a better job of explaining the inner workings of the logic used, so that one can relate to what is going on.

It was more about learning the system and how it operates with a separate database (Oracle) in our case. You have to know very well what kind of transactions you will do, how frequently, and what volumes are going to come to the system.

The licensing model is fair. You normally get a production license along with a stand-by license and a test/QA license for testing. The customer can be flexible to some degree on licensing.

Pricing is somewhat expensive for what the system is doing. There are cheaper solutions on the market, but they might not cover everything you need under one roof.

I was not involved in evaluating other options.

Do your research as to what your needs are with regard to both technical and business flows.

If the monitoring and debugging of flows is key, then you really want to get a demo. See how the system functions and if your team can understand it.

We really appreciated the solution itself (EDI transaction processor) and the Developer Studio. Ninety per cent of our sales order processing is automated through our SB BIS 6 system.

We have enjoyed high performance and only had a few problems. The Developer Studio and the debugging tools were easy to use. We could not function without an EDI system and SB BIS 6 is our chosen EDI system.

Error messages in the main area that could be better, but you can say that about any product.

The Front-End Monitoring tool part of Seeburger BIS 6, is a Java Web Start-based application. When a map (or transaction) fails, the errors go to a special section in monitoring, which is good. However, a lot of the times, when you are looking at the failure, it's one of those long Java.class failure descriptions. A lot of the times, in order to locate the error, you have to download the input data to your workstation, load the map that failed in your Seeburger BIS Developer Studio tool, run it there and then, debug it so as to locate the error.

One thing Seeburger BIS 6 is really good at, is enforcing standards (such as X12, EDIFACT, etc.) but, this can also bite you. When partners don't follow the standards, then the actual standard that is violated, doesn't necessarily jump at you in the Monitoring tool. You have to debug the data received and the map. This is from my experience with many tools, especially those built on Java. This kind of thing is not specific to Seeburger BIS, in my experience.

We have used the product for five years.

We had no stability issues.

We had no scalability issues.

Technical support was pretty good and had a fast turnaround.

We needed to upgrade our previous EDI tool. That tool did not have a migration path. We looked at many EDI tools and chose SB BIS as the best one available.

I won't lie. The setup and the configuration were both complex because it is a powerful tool.

The biggest complexity was one of the biggest benefits. Namely, you can run SB BIS components on multiple inter-connected servers, which we do.

I'm a developer, so I don't know about pricing.

No comment. We chose what we thought was the best.

SB BIS is hard to beat if you:

• Process thousands of transactions a day
• Do business in more than one country
• If you are an SAP shop

We are an SAP shop and SB BIS meshes very well with SAP. They are both German companies. I think both of their respective headquarters are located physically close to each other in Germany.