B2B Data Integration and Transformation Blog

REMEDI assists clients with many projects, issues, and routine maintenance. We thought we would take this opportunity to share one instance with you as we feel it’s information that can benefit our clients. In this project, we assisted a client with a project involving their Gentran Server Windows environment. The client updated their Windows operating system and that update caused the server hosting Gentran to stop booting. The under lying issue was a Windows Update issue and the client worked with Microsoft, but they could not resolve the Windows issue. Their EDI is the backbone of the business and they were in crisis mode.

Perhaps as an EDI professional you found yourself somewhere between curious and concerned by the recent IBM announcement that operating systems such as the iSeries and UNIX (most flavors) will no longer be supported when IBM rolls out its newest version of IBM Sterling B2B Integrator sometime next year.

Here are 5 things you can do to reduce the impact of that announcement.

On Thursday, October 5, 2017, IBM announced that with the next major version release of IBM’s Sterling B2B Integrator and Sterling File Gateway it will remove support for the following operating systems: iSeries, HP-UX, and Solaris. The next major release of B2B Integrator and Sterling File Gateway is scheduled for the middle of 2018, schedule subject to change. The version number for the next major release is still to be determined. This major release will only support Windows and Linux operating systems. Those clients that purchase the next major release new or upgrade to the next major release version, will need to run on Windows or Linux operating systems.

When speaking with customers, especially those customers that do not experience any issues with their EDI/MFT applications, one of the main questions I hear is, why should I pay for renewing my support and maintenance.  Many customers view the receipt of their annual support and maintenance invoice from their software vendor as an annual contribution to their software vendor with little return on the contribution.  However, that is far from the case.  Below is an outline of the typical benefits of renewing your annual software support and maintenance.  It is not all encompassing, but does cover most of the benefits. 

In an effort to provide you with the most current product information, we wanted to pass a long a brief update for those who have GENTRAN, Sterling B2B Integrator or File Gateway installations.

The last versions of these products released by Sterling Commerce before being acquired by IBM are quickly approaching their End of Support Dates (see below).  Current versions of these products are available for download in your IBM Passport Advantage or Passport Express account if you are current on Software Subscription & Support (SS&S).