Modernize and Optimize B2B Communications with Sterling Data Exchange on AWS ROSA

In today’s business environment, organizations need to exchange a vast number of documents, often with a large number of trading partners. There’s always a huge number of business documents to exchange, and they need to be handled at high speeds in multiple formats.

As technologies keep evolving, so do the number of protocols and standards. Organizations have to have secure integrated environments and meet the ever-shifting regulatory and compliance standards of their industry. Enterprises have the operational requirements of traceability, visibility and continuous monitoring and meeting of their SLAs. All this automation needs to happen with reduced complexity and costs in highly resilient environments.

To address these requirements, integrated B2B tools like IBM Sterling Data Exchange (SDE) are essential. In this blog, we will explain how customers can implement a fully-automated B2B solution, by running IBM Sterling Data Exchange on their AWS accounts using Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA) for high availability and scalability.

What is Sterling Data Exchange and what problems does it solve?

The IBM Sterling Data Exchange Managed File Transfer (MFT) and Business to Business (B2B) solutions in the SDE suite deliver key benefits that address the challenges Organizations face in this space.

By providing integration capabilities that include APIs to meet emerging customer mandates, real-time transaction processing needs, and support for all major EDI standards, IBM Sterling Data Exchange solutions can help clients ensure a secure and efficient data exchange with a unified and reliable file transfer platform within the enterprise and across an organization’s trading partner network.

Additionally, this solution is designed to work with a trading partner community that may interpret B2B standards differently, with a wide range of communications protocols supported.

In order to provide better resiliency and business continuity, SDE’s flexibility across on-premises, cloud, or hybrid-cloud environments using Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) as a platform caters to diverse organizational infrastructures.

In this blog post, we will walk through the recommended options for running SDE products on AWS, discuss the architecture, and describe how the IBM, Red Hat, and AWS components come together and provide a solid foundation for running Sterling products. We will also explore the architectural decisions to consider, issues and possible ramifications of some of these decisions, so you can choose the one that best fits your organization’s needs.

1. Empowering Control: Sterling Data Exchange on Customer-managed Red Hat OpenShift

Deploying Sterling Data Exchange on customer-deployed Red Hat OpenShift offers a unique blend of autonomy and control. By leveraging their in-house expertise in Red Hat OpenShift, particularly in crucial areas like security, customers can fortify their environment with robust protection.

Under this deployment model, customers assume full responsibility for managing every facet of their environment. This entails continuous attention, maintenance, and resource allocation to ensure smooth operations. However, the trade-off is significant—customers gain maximum control over both application and infrastructure, enabling them to tailor resources according to fluctuating demands and optimize efficiency as needed.

The efficacy of this deployment hinges on the customer’s architectural design and proficiency in managing Red Hat OpenShift and Sterling Data Exchange. The accessibility of version updates and additional features is contingent upon the customer’s software update plan for both platforms.

Moreover, since the environment operates within the customer’s AWS account, it leverages their existing AWS Enterprise Discount Plan, potentially translating into cost benefits.

Ultimately, while providing unparalleled autonomy and scalability, this deployment option necessitates meticulous planning and management to uphold optimal performance and cost-effectiveness.

The following diagram shows an architectural for a self-managed OpenShift cluster on AWS for IBM Sterling Data Exchange. The recommended deployment is a cluster spread over three Availability Zones for high availability. This can then be connected to AWS services such as Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS).

Figure 1. Architectural Overview of a self-managed OCP cluster on AWS for IBM Sterling Data Exchange.

2. Streamlined Experience: Sterling Data Exchange on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA)

Alternatively, the customer-hosted ROSA deployment option for Sterling Data Exchange offers a streamlined user experience. By entrusting all ROSA cluster lifecycle management—including upgrades and security hotfixes—to Red Hat and AWS teams, this option significantly reduces the customer’s operational burden.

With platform and infrastructure management and support handled by Red Hat and AWS teams, customers can focus solely on optimizing their Sterling Data Exchange application. This approach not only streamlines management but also frees up valuable customer resources for other critical tasks, making it an ideal choice for those seeking to prioritize their Sterling Data Exchange application.

Moreover, the ROSA deployment option maintains scalability, allowing seamless resource adjustments to accommodate varying demand levels. Customers retain full control over Sterling Data Exchange upgrades and deployed versions, enabling them to balance the software lifecycle with their business deadlines and demands.

The managed aspect of the ROSA platform provides robust high availability and fault-tolerance guardrails backed by Red Hat’s 99.95% uptime service level agreement (SLA). This SLA is designed to satisfy platform reliability and stability requirements, ensuring uninterrupted service delivery for the Sterling Data Exchange application.

Additionally, since the environment operates within the customer’s AWS account, it draws down against their existing AWS Enterprise Discount Plan (EDP), offering further cost benefits. The ROSA deployment option thus presents a compelling solution for customers prioritizing their Sterling Data Exchange applications while entrusting platform monitoring and maintenance to a managed service.

The following diagram shows an architectural for a ROSA cluster on AWS for IBM Sterling Data Exchange. Just as in the self-deployed model, the recommended deployment is a cluster spread over three Availability Zones for high availability. This can then be connected to AWS services such as Amazon RDS for your backing databases, or Amazon S3 for bulk storage of data associated with transfers too large or expensive to store elsewhere..

Figure 2. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS architecture overview for IBM Sterling Data Exchange.

With integration being essential to business transformation and agility, SDE on ROSA on AWS offers a highly scalable, secure and resilient deployment environment with a comprehensive integration solution that allows any of your applications in any environment to connect and exchange data. Managed File Transfer, B2B integration and the cloud work together to power your business with minimum downtime with seamless and disruption-free container deployment.

Customers should assess their infrastructure, customization, in-house skills and cost considerations, review strengths and limitations of each option to align with their specific business needs and requirements. This will enable informed decisions that ensure a successful and efficient IBM SDE deployment.

Summary

In this short introduction to Sterling Data Exchange on AWS, we’ve shown some of the deployment options available to easily configure and integrate Sterling and gain its benefits.

For more information, refer to the following resources:

• Learning more about Sterling here
• Get more information on our B2B integration solution capabilities with the additional links on Sterling bundles B2B Integration Suite and Secure File Transfer.
• Try out ROSA here
• Learn more about the IBM on AWS Partnership here