IBM API Connect is a scalable API solution that helps organizations implement a robust API strategy by creating, exposing, managing and monetizing an entire API ecosystem across multiple clouds. As businesses embrace their digital transformation journey, APIs become critical to unlock the value of business data and assets. With increasing adoption of APIs, consistency and governance are needed across the enterprise. API Connect aims to help businesses…
$83
per month
IBM DataPower Gateway
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
The IBM DataPower Gateway is a security and integration platform.
The power of IBM APIC is much more in contrast to Apigee or any other product of the same domain because it is having DataPower as the backbone which allows for easy integrating with almost any platform, providing the highest level of security, handling millions of transactions …
Overall, it can be stated that IBM API Connect has many benefits and can easily manage complicated integrations. The platform performs best in large environments, especially where microservices and processing of multiple API dependencies are required. On average, we have processed thousands of API calls within a second with good response time.
WebSphere DataPower Gateway is really beneficial if you are trying to integrate two or more systems. It provides you with comfort and peace of mind by creating a DMZ zone for the services which are going out of the intranet to hit external clients APIs. It is greatly recommended if you have a very high volume service or API which is being used by a majority of clients because it has a dedicated physical box present which takes care of memory, CPU and all such stuff. So, all your transactions happen at wire-speed.
The most obvious thing that DataPower does exceptionally well is security. All the built-in supported security capabilities allow us to isolate most security tasks to DataPower and as a result "protect" down steam services/systems to have to deal with security.
DataPower is very good at protocol conversion and as it is usually used on the edge allows you to narrow down the protocols used between the companies public and private networks.
The appliance concept makes maintenance, recovery and, management so much simpler.
The old interface is being really missed by our team as the new WebUI interface is not that intuitive or easy to work with. It takes a lot of time to load. There should be an inbuilt wizard for creating a Rest service as well like there is for an XML based service.
IBM support is very knowledgeable but it's not that easy to reach them. They don't release the fix patches very soon which also becomes a big issue in certain situations where critical projects are involved.
Lastly, DataPower has its steep learning curve and it requires time and effort on your end to gain full control and make the most of the advanced features which it offers. Finding the right resource in the market is not that easy.
I have given an 8 out of 10 rating because I believe multiple authentication security techniques, such as OAUTH, MTLS, JWK, etc., are supported out of the box for APIs. A single interface may be used for API development, automation, and administration, ensuring security and boosting productivity. Highly regarded compared to its rivals, indicating that it has provided good service over time. Although It takes a lot of time and effort to set up initially. However, once everything is set up, it is quite simple to administer, especially because there is only one interface to utilize. This makes it very straightforward to handle.
IBM API Connect and Apigee are both robust API management platforms. IBM API Connect was selected for its strong integration capabilities, hybrid cloud deployment options, and comprehensive analytics. It aligns well with organizations seeking flexibility and control over their API ecosystems, especially when dealing with complex integration scenarios across diverse environments.
Centralizing on an API management platform was imperative. Being able to support SOAP UIs as well as REST APIs was required. Because of the tooling, service inventory and provisioning can be managed - regardless of the pricing and cost structures are used.
Constructing plans that provide tiering options based on rate limits help in onboarding new consumers. The lesser cost in onboarding through an API gateway outweighs the cost of modifying/configuring an API to handle multiple clients.
Defining guidance and onboarding practices while rolling out the product also helps in the adoption, reference architecture, and governance that can save your company money.
It has really taken our business to the next level. We have expanded and integrated with so many new vendors and for all those integrations DataPower is serving as our security gateway.
We don't have to depend on any other tool for doing the load balancing of the incoming requests as that is also taken care inside the WebSphere DataPower Gateway box itself, thereby distributing the load equally.
It has made our platform much more secure, uniform and robust to deal with any kind of incoming message format or threat as well due to its latest security mechanisms and huge processing power.
