IBM API Connect vs. WSO2 API Manager

Based on our experience, IBM API Connect clearly excels in large enterprises navigating complex B2B ecosystems, especially within the Fintech and Banking sectors. Its capabilities are particularly valuable for achieving Open Banking compliance, facilitating the monetization of data and services, and seamlessly operating in hybrid cloud environments. However, it's crucial to understand that IBM API Connect primarily functions as an API management and orchestration tool. This means that backend integrations with providers like databases are best handled by dedicated integration middleware, such as IBM App Connect, allowing API Connect to then securely and efficiently expose those functionalities to external entities.

It's free! No argument can win a fight with that! And it's the only reason I gave it a 5. If you have no money to spend, and a simple environment you'll have a nice product. But free does come with a price. After 5 years we're still struggling with ports, and analytics (it just won't work without any errors caused by some configuration somewhere). An API Manager should work out of the box. The only configuration expertise that any developer wants to invest in, is the configuration of API's. Not the product itself... Anyone who've seen the training material, just for installing this thing will agree that this is not the way to go. Of all the API Managers out there (we've tried 4), WSO2 is the only one were you need to know how this dragon of a java application works internally. Did I already mention the humongous amount of config files?

Incentivized

• API discovery feature is very helpful to allow us to scope the work required before diving into things.
• The ability to set permissions and rulesets at a user level is essential to restrict access to specific datasets.
• Ability for external users (those from outside our organisation) to leverage the API in more restrictive manner.

Incentivized

• Authentication based on OAuth 2.0 and HTTP Basic Authentication.
• Rate Limiting applied at different levels like Subscriber, API, Resource and Backend.
• Monitoring by exporting the metrics in Prometheus and traces in Jaeger.
• Mediation to perform transformation, orchestration etc.

Incentivized

• Improvement can come in the interface of the tool, which is sometimes complex and requires a deep understanding of the tool.
• Improving the different levels of access to the playroom could be helpful because product owners and developers need to see other information.
• Publishing API and integration of API can be more straightforward.

Incentivized

• Better QA testing prior to releases rollout
• Better support needed

Incentivized

I can honestly say that the availability of the platform has been incredible, with almost no disruptions during the two years of the implementation. Availability is provided through the distributed architecture that may be deployed in multiple zones. We have had almost no cases of unplanned outages, and most maintenance operations were done during planned downtimes.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Providing better capabilities comparing the overall API lifecycle management, especially the availability of API Integration layer and a strong identity layer of their own which provides an end-to-end API ecosystem that would be advantageous in terms of a large software development initiative.

Incentivized

• Our company benefited from IBM API Connect's assistance in establishing cooperation with our outside providers and efficiently managing the API. As a result, we were able to expand our vendor ecosystem.
• Additionally, creating APIs and implementing them on the goods was not too difficult. Additionally, we were able to ensure that only appropriate people could publish the APIs following evaluation by using role-based access control.
• Our teams were able to reuse and share departmental APIs and services with each other thanks to the simple, self-service developer site.

Incentivized

• We've moved away from legacy SOAP services where nobody knew what services was used by who. WSO2 eliminated at least 90% of time spend on any service.
• Creating API's (or actually creating the API Management layer...) is so simple that new developers can get away with it in no time. Again, real time gainer.
• Since creating API's is so simple, developers are very fast in adopting a kind of "Domain thinking". In comparison with Azure API Manager: Azure does not demand knowledge of "how" the product works, but it's definitely more difficult to get an API up and running in Azure. And for some reason, azure does not promote clean domain driven architecture. Domain Driven architecture is the greatest time saver strategy possible. And WSO2 fits nicely in there.

Incentivized