1) Securing your back-end APIs - If you have a legacy back-end web service that has a basic authentication scheme, you can add some additional security by placing APIM in front, and requiring subscription keys. Leverage your existing firewall to ensure only your APIM instance can communicate with your back-end API, and you've basically added a layer of protection.
2) Lift and shift - there are always going to be clients that don't want to update their clients to use a newer API; in some cases you can make a newer API look like an older one by implementing some complex policies in APIM. You can also do the opposite, making older APIs look new, such as making an XML back-end accept both JSON and XML.
3) Centralizing your APIs - if you've acquired another company and want to make their API set look as if it's a part of the larger whole, APIM is an easy way to provide a consistent front-end interface for developers.
If you are truly using IBM API Management for an API gateway, you will be ok. if you start trying to build custom scripts to transform messages complex in nature, it will soon become unmanageable.
Import APIs - We have an existing inventory of APIs and services, so having an easy import process was required. IBM provides the ability to import Swagger so the process was quick and easy.
Service Offerings - Can create plans to control various model offerings for varying clients depending on the need. You are not locked into a tier structure and can customize if a need arises.
API Usage - visibility into the use of an API with a wealth of reporting information allows you to support an API from a production use to trending and forecasting any future growth.
Lack of robustness is a bit of an issue. Several other providers offer more options and capabilities, but then, they are lacking in interface ease.
As with anything Azure, pricing is really hard to stay on top of. I always find that you really don’t know what you’re paying for until you get the bill. Having an excellent Azure Administrator can help resolve that.
Integrating with app services outside of Azure can be a challenge, or at least much more challenging than just using Azure App Services.
Troubleshooting deployment pipeline - identifying issues with your api based on restrictions through a deployment pipeline is difficult. If a quality assurance environment is less stringent than a production environment, making sure your api is accessible and configured appropriately is tough.
Code level scripting is limited to javascript and xslt. so if any complex fanning needs to occur, you are limited in tooling.
Administration is more cumbersome than it needs to be. There are roles/profiles that are defined, but to use a group email for the approval or use of an api needs to managed better. A more thorough thought process needs to be defined - which I think IBM is tackling as an improvement.
There are a lot of similarities between Apigee Edge and IBM API Management. Some of the differences at the time of this posting is... 1) IBM APIM/C integrates better with other products. Dynatrace is used to track API and service specifics with the ability to offload those statistics for operational reporting. 2) If you are evolving from DataPower, IBM API Management is a logical choice to support additional REST APIs. 3) Generating keys is simple. Integration of those keys with a secure data vault is easy as well for your consumer.
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.
