IBM DataPower Gateway vs. OCI API Management

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.

Incentivized

Oracle API Manager is well suited in a business or company that make use of Apis to facilitate access of backend services and data sources by the staff or customers or both. It is also imported in situations where all actions in a system need to be attributed to specific users.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Mature and Reliable. Last year, Oracle API Manager was quite buggy, and couldn't be used at production-level. Fortunately, almost all of the problems that it had previously are now patched.
• Offloads Most of the Workload of Developing APIs. While defining APIs, Oracle API Manager does a great job in providing suggestions and error checks in our logic.
• Supports SOAP and REST. Not only can you create APIs that can query for data, but you can also create API endpoints that can manipulate the data in your back-end databases.

• 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.

Incentivized

• I would say it would be nice if it could handle non-Oracle type API's...such as in-house developed interfaces, etc.
• It would be nice if it at least could list non-Oracle type APIs so that this system became a repository for ALL of the application interfaces
• Maybe it has this and I missed it, the monitoring appears to be one API at a time, would be nice to see a page that has all of the monitored APIs with some basic monitored info perhaps. It does have alerts, audit trails, and integrates with Enterprise Manager (I did not see this integration though)

Incentivized

Cost of the appliance

Incentivized

Oracle API Manager is much easier to learn and understand then IBM Data Power Gateway and IBM API Connect. We selected Oracle API Manager in our company because to have a good intuitive interface with drag and drop features and because beginners and easily get up to speed to use this tool.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Overall, the client is pleased with the API Manager. They are rather new to it so the ROI has not really been realized yet
• They like the ability to monitor the API's utilization (this monitoring could maybe be used for the prior question on usage billing...they do not currently do this for their supported applications)
• They like the ability that the APIs can be secured. Just because it exists, doesn't mean it can be used just anywhere...

Incentivized