IBM API Connect is a scalable API solution that helps organizations implement a robust API strategy by creating, exposing, managing and monetizing an entire API ecosystem across multiple clouds. As businesses embrace their digital transformation journey, APIs become critical to unlock the value of business data and assets. With increasing adoption of APIs, consistency and governance are needed across the enterprise. API Connect aims to help businesses…
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IBM DataPower Gateway
Score 8.0 out of 10
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The IBM DataPower Gateway is a security and integration platform.
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Pricing
IBM API Connect
IBM DataPower Gateway
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM API Connect
IBM DataPower Gateway
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM API Connect
IBM DataPower Gateway
Considered Both Products
IBM API Connect
Verified User
Anonymous
Chose IBM API Connect
Ease of use of the product and pricing of the product.
Prior to adopting IBM API Connect, there were two main competitors, MuleSoft. Although in the integration capabilities MuleSoft seemed to have an advantage, and regarding developer experience, IBM API Connect had a set of enterprise features for the API management.
Mulesoft seemed to take a lot longer to implement and reach any real ROI attribution. For the other competitors, I'd say they are easier to administrate, but this isn't as important to us as a business user. It was easier to explore APIs with IBM than it was with others.
There were multiple product we read and then shortlist were taken as POC against IBM API Connect. -Google Apigee : is good but in cross cloud there are concerns. Also, feature of reading & identifying the target system certificate was not available there.
It was organizational boundaries to use IBM API Connect but we have learnt so many think on this technology. Obviously, We have more experience on this it;s easy for us to configure and maintain the system.
IBM API Connect have more feature compared to other solutions like from one platform we can create APIs on the API Manager, we can publish the APIs to the products/portal server, we can secure the APIs using IBM DataPower Gateway, we can socalize the APIs using developer …
We use IBM Cloud, which works well with our hybrid cloud deployment. As a large firm, we are able to scale as required once the initial setup is complete.
There are two main reasons for choosing IBM over others. 1) Pricing 2) The conversation during the sales stage. The team at IBM understood our requirements and acted as consultants instead of sales people. They genuinely focused on providing a solution to our pain points which …
IBM APIC far and away blows the other two systems I've used out of the water. There really isn't any comparison, in my humble opinion. Ease of use, security, versioning, efficiency, accountability are basically 'forced' by APIC, which allows less burden on the users themselves.
IBM API Connect and Apigee are both robust API management platforms. IBM API Connect was selected for its strong integration capabilities, hybrid cloud deployment options, and comprehensive analytics. It aligns well with organizations seeking flexibility and control over their …
API Connect was far more mature, far quicker than Kong. It was clear a few years ago that API Connect features such as Applications and Product groupings were the way forward as Kong was at the time lacking these but planning to replicate them in their roadmaps
This is more of a combinatory set of features where it isn't a question of either or, but rather what and how when. Choosing the right tool and implementation format for the problem at hand - and having the option to select tooling from the full set in the toolbox.
Overall, it can be stated that IBM API Connect has many benefits and can easily manage complicated integrations. The platform performs best in large environments, especially where microservices and processing of multiple API dependencies are required. On average, we have processed thousands of API calls within a second with good response time.
WebSphere DataPower Gateway is really beneficial if you are trying to integrate two or more systems. It provides you with comfort and peace of mind by creating a DMZ zone for the services which are going out of the intranet to hit external clients APIs. It is greatly recommended if you have a very high volume service or API which is being used by a majority of clients because it has a dedicated physical box present which takes care of memory, CPU and all such stuff. So, all your transactions happen at wire-speed.
The foremost thing that we use DataPower is for implementing top-notch level security in different projects. We use it as a security gateway when some internal client or external client wants to make a call to any of our APIs. The basic security implementation which we do for the projects is SSL which can get more and more advanced based on the requirements of the project. Some clients want to implement OAuth, some want to implement SAML, and some are happy with a 2-way SSL handshake.
Another big advantage of DataPower is that it supports all the major industry message formats. It especially has an inbuilt component called the Multi-Protocol Gateway which comes installed in the box itself. It's the best thing if you want to convert an XML to JSON or vice-versa. It does all those conversions at wire-speed doesn't matter the volume of those transactions. We also use it with MQ while interacting with Mainframes and legacy systems. It supports all MQ properties and gives us the flexibility to change the message as well if required.
We have used DataPower in integration with ServiceNow as well to raise incidents and trigger emails to respective clients by writing custom scripts which continuously runs on the DataPower logs. As soon as they see any particular error for the services which are being monitored, they send an SNMP trap to ServiceNow with the error message and an incident is raised.
That being stated, every thing you own will have both positive and negative aspects to its use. It can be perplexing at times, particularly when navigating between different functions.
However, based on my usage of this application up until this point, I've discovered that the only time it lags is when it's downloading updates. Otherwise, it's excellent to utilise for all other customs.
The old interface is being really missed by our team as the new WebUI interface is not that intuitive or easy to work with. It takes a lot of time to load. There should be an inbuilt wizard for creating a Rest service as well like there is for an XML based service.
IBM support is very knowledgeable but it's not that easy to reach them. They don't release the fix patches very soon which also becomes a big issue in certain situations where critical projects are involved.
Lastly, DataPower has its steep learning curve and it requires time and effort on your end to gain full control and make the most of the advanced features which it offers. Finding the right resource in the market is not that easy.
IBM API Connect may be less appropriate for small-scale projects with minimal API management requirements, where simpler and more cost-effective solutions suffice. Organizations lacking the necessary technical expertise or resources to harness its full potential may face implementation challenges. In static environments with infrequent API changes or limited developer engagement, the platform's comprehensive features may be excessive for the task at hand.
Our decision to adopt IBM API Connect was driven by its comprehensive end-to-end API lifecycle management, which proved to be exceptionally well-suited to our B2B, Open Banking, and multi-fintech integration requirements. When compared with other solutions, API Connect stood out for its ability to externalize and govern APIs at scale, while offering enterprise-grade capabilities critical for our regulated environment. IBM App Connect serves as our internal integration middleware, focused on backend orchestration and data transformation. IBM watsonx acts as a complementary AI and data platform for exposing intelligent services especially with the code assistant functionality, it is API Connect that provides the crucial layer for external API exposure, management, and monetization. IBM DataPower is an incredibly secure and performant runtime, and lacks key enterprise features such as developer engagement, full API governance, and analytics. API Connect fills that gap seamlessly, offering a unified, secure, and scalable API management experience.
It has really taken our business to the next level. We have expanded and integrated with so many new vendors and for all those integrations DataPower is serving as our security gateway.
We don't have to depend on any other tool for doing the load balancing of the incoming requests as that is also taken care inside the WebSphere DataPower Gateway box itself, thereby distributing the load equally.
It has made our platform much more secure, uniform and robust to deal with any kind of incoming message format or threat as well due to its latest security mechanisms and huge processing power.
