IBM API Management vs. MetricStream Platform

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.

MetricStream is well suited for when you need to pull a report into Excel for further analysis. It is not good for when information needs to be entered as this is all done manually by analysts and managers. If we can implement a way to take parts of uploaded documents and have the system automatically enter the information in the designated fields in MetricStream, it would cut out lots of manual work for our department.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Easy to navigate.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Speed/efficiency.
• Missing functionality: Uploading documents (Excel sheets) into MetricStream and being able to pull information from that form into the program.
• Improve number of outages and time that it is out for.

Incentivized

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.

Archer is more risk-management-friendly in that it has a better interface and more room to conduct risk-related tasks and pull reports.

Incentivized

• 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 keeps records of all of our vendors and the corresponding documents.
• Other departments can access information on vendors.

Incentivized