Item: WSO2 API Manager
Rating: 5
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

WSO2 API Manager is used across the whole organization to expose the business entities on which 50% of all our applications are dependent on. We use it for our micro service infrastructure to connect and "loose couple" different application domains. It's main function is to provide a way to subscribe to API's and track API subscriptions.

Pros and Cons

Very easy to create API's: it has a very intuitive interface.
Overall (Subscriber and Store) everything looks clean and simple.
If you know how to, it provides you with all functionality that an API manager should provide. Like security, sandbox, API Console, swagger, mediation policies and much more.

Installation of this product is a hell. You need to be an expert to get this running together with WSO2 Analytics. It uses a really confusing method of "port + 1" to connect extra products. I guess this was meant to provide a handy way to add new WSO2 products. In reality you'll need to scroll through numerous config files to set this straight. If you use this out of the box, everything will work all right. But the moment you add SSL certificates, DNS names and you'll need special ports to configure your firewall, this product becomes unmaintainable.
The "Store" provides a nice way to group API's. However, the "Publisher" does not... if you have more than 30 API's searching for API's becomes really annoying.
The number of configs in this product is huge. As a developer myself, I've never seen (and definitely never created) a product that needed that much config files. Installation and maintenance of products should be stupidly simple, since no developer nor infrastructure person wants to learn something that "just" needs to be a tool.. opposed to being a whole new area of expertise. After using WSO2 API Manager for a while, we wanted to change the admin password... this should be simple enough, like just change the password in "Carbon." But nope. The whole WSO2 environment crashed. We just gave up. Too dangerous.
Why so many different "products"? Publisher, Store, Carbon, and numerous hidden interfaces. Analytics, ESB whatever... No wonder there are so many config files and port issues. Make it simple!!!

Return on Investment

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.

Alternatives Considered

Nevatech Sentinet:
The easiest API Manager available. No knowledge of how the product works internally needed! It works with C# (not java... with all it's config files... really? Java developers?). Great way to categorize API's into groups (domains). All of which is drama in WSO2. But Sentinel is really expensive...
Mulesoft:
Nice and clean. Again, no expert knowledge needed of how the product works internally. Like using word... or any other application, except WSO2. Have java developers never heard of exposing configurations through a user inyterface?? Mulesoft, however is really expensive.
Azure:
Not cheap!! And a chaotic interface too. But it pays! If you have a Microsoft account already, this is your next step.

We chose WSO2 4 years ago because it was free... but we're moving to azure now. And we're very happy with that decision.

Key Insights

Do you think WSO2 API Manager delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with WSO2 API Manager's feature set?

Yes

Did WSO2 API Manager live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of WSO2 API Manager go as expected?

Would you buy WSO2 API Manager again?

Other Software Used

OutSystems, Sitecore Experience Platform, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, Atlassian Confluence, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Graylog

Likelihood to Recommend

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?

Prepare to dig through countless config files with this product!

Overall Satisfaction with WSO2 API Manager