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.
Mashery is great when it comes to deployment to your own datacenter and when it comes to managing third party API's like Salesforce using Mashery Cloud version. I would be a little bit more careful when deploying it on Kubernetes as it was not designed for it. New version 5 is re-architected to run more on natively on Kubernetes, but we have not tested it yet.
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.
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.
The "Control Center" admin dashboard is not performant. We have a lot of configuration data in Mashery (many endpoints, many plans, many users, many keys, etc.) and the website struggles with the volume of data it has to deal with.
Their systems have limitations that make it more difficult for us to operate the way we would like. For example, there is a limit to the number of API Definitions we can create, as well as a limit to the number of Endpoints we can define in a Plan.
Their support organization leaves a lot to be desired. Responses are slow, and when they do come they are often inadequate. We have to re-phrase the question to get them to answer it differently, or we have to repeatedly follow up to ask for additional clarifying information.
i find some of the package adding and key are complex . UI experience is bad . Every step need front and backward navigation too much. It would be better if endpoint itself contain package and key addiction option
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.
I've really only looked at Mashery since it has been around a very long time and has a rich feature set. I do know our platform teams are looking into AWS gateway but not sure this product has everything we need.
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.
As a API Mediation layer it has helped with the troublesome port setup with internal and external clients. Meaning it made that easy to the client that they know where to go for access to an API.
The interactive documentation is very well put together and has reduced the time that developers have to go back and forth with each other to figure how to call the API.
