When your business is responsible for delivering vital energy resources to millions of people, there is no margin for error. Every message exchanged with external partners, every file transferred, every EDI transaction has to arrive securely and on time.
For a major Norwegian energy operator, the B2B integration landscape had grown fragmented and lacked the transparency needed for an operation of this scale. Too much operational knowledge lived with individual experts rather than in documented, standardized procedures.
The operator turned to Sopra Steria, an Axway partner, to strengthen and modernize its B2B integration capabilities and build a platform fit for mission-critical infrastructure.
Mission-critical message flows on a fragmented foundation
The operator manages continuous B2B message flows with multiple external partners. These integrations span EDI and XML message exchange, secure file transfer, and connections to internal backend systems. The platform underpinning all of this needed to meet several requirements at once: high availability, secure communication through a demilitarized zone (DMZ) architecture, support for a wide range of message standards, and the operational maturity to keep everything running without depending on any single person’s expertise.
At the same time, the operator’s goals were clear: improve operational stability, reduce risk, increase transparency across the integration landscape, and ensure the platform was future-ready, including considerations for potential cloud and containerization strategies down the line.
From person-dependent to process-driven
Sopra Steria designed and implemented a solution built on Axway B2Bi as the core integration platform. The architecture includes a clustered deployment with Axway Secure Relay handling communication at the DMZ layer, reducing operational and security risk.
But the technology was only part of the engagement. Sopra Steria also focused on operational maturity: building clear runbooks, establishing on-call procedures, and creating troubleshooting documentation that enabled the operator’s own teams to manage the platform with confidence. This shift from person-dependent operations to process-driven operations was a key outcome of the project.
On the integration side, the platform now supports structured governance of message flows, mappings, and partner configurations. The solution brings partner messaging and security under a single, well-governed platform. New partner onboarding, message flow changes, and platform upgrades have all been handled without service disruption, a requirement that is non-negotiable for an operator running continuous, mission-critical transactions.
Axway B2Bi: a stable backbone for daily operations
Axway B2Bi has become the stable backbone of the operator’s daily B2B operations. The platform processes mission-critical transactions reliably, incident handling and recovery times have improved through mature operational practices, and multiple internal teams and external partners now work through one integration layer with clear visibility.
The engagement has also opened the door to broader collaboration. Sopra Steria and the operator continue to work with Axway on the platform roadmap and future evolution.
For Sopra Steria, this project demonstrates what effective Axway partnership looks like in practice: deploying the software and building the operational foundation that keeps a platform running over the long term.
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