Microsoft Application Server (deprecated) vs. WSO2 API Manager

Microsoft Application Server has been incredible this past year during COVID. Previously I would have said that we could go without it, but after this past season, I’m glad we have utilized it. Without having this software set up prior to COVID, we would have been in a tough situation. I mention COVID a lot because we were able to continue our work almost seamlessly this entire year.

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

• Microsoft Application Server has proven to be highly reliable and effective at deploying to all of its clients.
• Application performance is surprisingly good and responsive even in bandwidth-constrained environments and generally very reliable.
• All software programs are manageable from a single location, even when bandwidth is limited.

• 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

• Some security hotfixes and general release updates require restarts.
• We wish it supported more applications out of the box.
• Thin client support would be great for MS Application Server.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

I have found Microsoft Application Server to be incredibly easy to use. I have used dozens of similar programs and have always struggled to navigate through all the functions. So far I have been able to adapt and learn this software with ease. I rarely run into a problem that I wasn’t easily able to move forward on with a few tips.

Stability is one of the first things we consider when evaluating software. MS Application Server has been rock solid and has reduced the time that our IT staff dedicates to maintaining our legacy applications.

Incentivized

It has a similar feature to what Microsoft Application Server has but at a greater cost and also having to deal with another vendor when we could use a full Microsoft Stack for better training and support.

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 ROI has been great since it has enabled our IT staff to have a central location to perform application updates which enables us to save time and money.
• Deployment is very easy since the internal applications that required constant updating are now updated in one central location.
• It's a lot easier to be within compliance protocols requirements.

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