Taking Full Advantage VMWare™ with Sterling Integrator Upgrade

Maturity Proven to Justify Upgrade

Introduction

A large Midwest food producer uses EDI for nearly all their sales to grocers and food service companies. To boost margin through process automation, they moved to SAP™ and Gentran Integration Suite™ or GIS (now known as Sterling Integrator™ or SI). As the final customers were added, it became clear that the high volume level dictated that they streamline their processes and reduce hardware expenses.

Overview

With assistance from DCS with the GIS upgrade allowed the customer to migrate their production system to VMware™. VMware immediately reduced the amount of hardware needed for the SI implementation. It also made it more feasible to split the implementation so that the database was residing on one Virtual Machine and the application installed on another (Sterling Commerce’s preferred configuration). This configuration allows for better performance and reduced memory constraint issues associated with SQL server and SI, as both applications like a lot of memory.

VMware also allows for off-site management of hardware allowing for quicker response times when there are server issues in the middle of the night. No full-time night operator is needed, as only an on-call operator who can log-in for any arising server issues in the middle of the night.

Many other benefits are available in this new release as well

• AS2 updates including throttling capabilities and email notifications of participants on delivery failures.
• Enhanced Security update
• The ability to update standards without updating GIS. Sterling plans to update the various standards 3-4 times a year and now you can do it without a full GIS upgrade.

This GIS conversion was a part of a larger system wide conversion to VMWare, and took roughly 80 hours to complete. It included thorough system work load testing. All upgrades are unique and DCS can help you determine the level of effort needed.

Conclusion

DCS knows Sterling’s products and has in depth experience upgrading and migrating various configurations of Sterling. Because of our experience we can thoroughly, quickly, and economically migrate or upgrade your existing system. Our DCS GROW™ Development Service ensures your implementation will be smooth and your cash flow uninterrupted. The first step is easy, e-mail DCS for your FREE assessment.