Sterling File Gateway (SFG) is a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based solution which allows you to incorporate your file transfer communities into all your business processes and incorporates Web-based interfaces for customer selfservices and rapid on-boarding. SFG resides at the heart of the IBM Sterling Managed File Transfer (MFT) strategy, the market-leading solution for secure data movement that enables enterprises to gain control and oversight of the massive movement of critical corporate data to facilitate data growth, reduce security risk, and improve IT and business efficiency. An important advantage of positioning file transfer services apart from other business processing platforms is to isolate internal workflow from affecting the congruity of communication with trading partners. SFG gives this added level of flexibility permitting an organization opportunities to examine and adjust efficiencies, conduct internal maintenance or configure transaction scheduling as needed without any interference whatsoever to customer data flow. The SFG application includes but is not limited to the following services.

• File/File name Transformations – Mapping of input to output file names; system-wide, group, and partner-specific policies; common file processing tasks such as compression/decompression, PGP encryption/decryption, and signing.
  
  
• File Transfer Visibility – Events are recorded for monitoring and reporting; detailed tracking for input-output file structure processing and dynamic route determination; ability to view and filter Sterling File Gateway data flows for all users.
  
  
• Replay/Redeliver – One click replay/redeliver capability that allows users to reprocess a transmission from the beginning or to resend just the processed file to a specific delivery destination.
  
  
• Notifications – Partners and operators can subscribe to be notified about events by email.
  
  
• Predefined business processes – Define common behaviors in file-transfer scenarios, reducing the need for customization.
  
  
• Extensibility – Custom event codes, protocols, facts, and consumer identification policies can be added to support unique scenarios.
  
  
• Broad Communications Protocol Support – FTP, FTP/S, SSH/SFTP, SSH/SCP, and Connect:Direct are supported upon installation, and additional protocols (such as AS2, AS3, or Odette FTP) may be configured through use of the extensibility feature.
  
  
• Partner Interface (myFileGateway) – Web browser-based interface that enables partners to upload/download files, subscribe to notifications of events, manage passwords, search and view file transfer activity, and generate reports about file transfer activity.
  
  
• Flexible Mailbox Structures – Ability to specify mailbox structures that leverage pattern matching policies and specify attributes that must be true of all partners or a subset of partners
  
  
• Dynamic Routing – Consumer derived at run-time, either through mailbox structure, file name, business process-derived consumer name, or mapderived consumer name.
  
  
• Partner On-boarding – Easy-to-use graphical user interface to on-board partners and configure the various combinations of communication protocols to enable Sterling File Gateway operations.

 

The Shree Consulting family of expert resources stand ready to assist your organization in realizing the cost savings and competitive advantage of automating the on-boarding and organization of new trading partners with Sterling Community Manager. Contact Shree Consulting for more information.

For more information regarding IBM® Sterling Community Manager and other products in the IBM® Sterling Business Integration Suite visit their website at
http://www.sterlingcommerce.com/products.