Introduction
Seeburger AG is a leading provider of business integration solutions, offering a comprehensive suite of tools known as the Business Integration Suite (BIS). With over 30 years of industry experience, Seeburger has established itself as a trusted partner for businesses seeking efficient and secure integration solutions in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape. The Business Integration Suite is designed to enable seamless connectivity and data exchange across various systems and applications. The Connectors Development Group led by Udo Bartmus is instrumental for the success of the suite. Udo’s team is made of protocol experts, like Ivo Matheis who is in charge of Seeburger’s Managed File Transfer (MFT) adapters supporting the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.
“In the past we had an SMB file adapter based on open source. We like open source very much and we use it heavily in our product. However, when customers started opening a growing number of support tickets, we understood that open source is not enough for us. So we decided to find an independent SMB library that supports our needs.”
Udo Bartmus – Head of Connectors Development, Seeburger
The Challenge
Seeburger’s BIS can design and fulfill the most diverse business processes you may imagine for its ten thousand customers or so. For example extract, manipulate, convert and transfer a document to its destination system, business partner or cloud service via tailor-made Seeburger’s adapters. A key role in the process is played by Seeburger’s MFT (Managed File Transfer). One of the most popular file manipulations needed by Seeburger’s customers required an SMB3 file adapter. In order to support SMB3, many Seeburger customers who had Windows used the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) paths with Java I/O files directly which is also included in Seeburger’s file system adapter. However, many Enterprise customers wanted SMB3 support even if they were not running on Windows. More and more customers used public clouds – like AWS, Azure and GCP – where SMB3 is required for some of the services. In addition, Seeburger offered a REST interface and expected some of the customers using it to ask for SMB connectivity because it’s faster than REST.
After Seeburger gained some experience with an open source SMB library, a growing customer base demanded a more robust SMB library. This was the main driver to look for an independent implementation of SMB3 library, like Visuality Systems’ jNQ.
“Our MFT connects to MS Azure thanks to jNQ. Also the integration with MS DFS works fully and easily. We are backed by Visuality Systems’ support team with their good advice.”
Ivo Matheis – Senior Software Engineer, Seeburger
Why Seeburger Chose Visuality Systems
Seeburger chose Visuality Systems because:
- Make-or-buy decision – Microsoft SMB is a complex protocol so buy is better than make. Visuality Systems is recommended by Microsoft.
- Support – with open source you have to wait for long before you get a patch – if at all – or dig into issues yourself. Seeburger needed an accountable supplier.
- Future oriented – new SMB features must be deployed in line with Microsoft General Availability schedule.
- Flexibility – Seeburger’s customers value the flexibility that Seeburger offers, just as Seeburger appreciates the flexibility provided by Visuality Systems.
In Udo’s words, “Visuality Systems adapts quickly to requests or changes exactly as we, at Seeburger, do with our customers.”
“We are used to open source, we like it and we also fix it in concert with the community when needed. However SMB is complex. We never intended to implement the SMB3 protocol even if we’re able because we want to save time. We pay for jNQ, but the whole package is cheaper and saves a lot of nerves.”
Udo Bartmus – Head of Connectors Development, Seeburger
The Results
Thanks to Visuality Systems’ jNQ, Seeburger’s MFT can connect to Microsoft Azure without any limitations. “jNQ supports SMB3 with Kerberos authentication over the internet which is certainly better than SMB2 combined with VPN,” said Ivo Matheis.
Ivo explained that another important jNQ outcome is related to DFS: “The open source library had issues with the Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS). We solved them when we adopted jNQ. From an SMB perspective, jNQ is feature complete.”
Ivo concluded: “Having Visuality Systems involved makes Udo and me more relaxed.”
Get in Touch
Want to see similar results? Get in touch with us today! Our team of experts has years of experience in delivering SMB protocol solutions that work in any environments, from the simplest to the most challenging ones.
Raphael Barki, Head of Marketing, Visuality Systems
