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Azul Zulu vs IBM DataPower Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azul Zulu
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
AI Customer Experience Personalization (26th), AI Content Creation (12th)
IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Azul Zulu is 3.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.9%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azul Zulu3.6%
IBM DataPower Gateway3.9%
Other92.5%
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Standardized our Java estate and have reduced licensing costs while maintaining strong support
Azul Zulu's ability to allow us to standardize our Java estate on a single and well-supported platform stands out as one of its best features. This standardization simplifies our compliance audits and ensures all our applications receive timely security updates.Azul Zulu positively impacts our organization by providing a platform that allows us to standardize Java on a well-supported platform. Without the high cost associated with other proprietary vendors, Azul Zulu provides an excellent platform for running our applications.
AkshaySawant - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at CSB Bank Ltd
Security features excel but development limitations emerge
We are using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes. As per the development perspective, there are some limitations with IBM DataPower Gateway because it only supports XML and XSLT language, but it does not support the Java language. This is the only limitation of the IBM DataPower Gateway. For the authentication and authorization purpose, we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. It's a very good product. We are mostly using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes and load balancing purposes. If we are handling the load for a particular server, then we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. The IBM DataPower Gateway is mostly used for security purposes. If we have some APIs and we are using some security for those APIs, then we can use it. It can also be used as a load balancer. It's also used for certificate management, user management purposes, authentication, and authorization. For routing, the IBM DataPower Gateway has multiple URL-based routing and content-based routing capabilities. If we have multiple URLs, then we can use an XML script. Using the XSLT language, we can configure multiple URLs and implement URL-based routing. Content-based routing means if we have multiple requests, we can route the request to a particular URL. For this, we need to use the XSLT language only. We can't use XML, Java, or other scripting languages. With IBM DataPower Gateway, we are using all the APIs. All APIs have been configured on the gateway. We have configured the particular TLS profile and some TLS client profiles as well. Using that TLS profile, we have configured the APIs and authentication. We have configured some tokens also, including JWT tokens and different types of auth tokens. There is also a rate limiting feature which we use for handling API loads.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We've had no issues with stability."
"I joined this project which had already been underway for approximately six months, and in two months, I refactored the whole project and wrote it, and it is functional."
"We achieved specific outcomes from using Azul Zulu by reducing our Java licensing and support costs by approximately 70% when compared to our previous Oracle contract."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"You don't have to have a separate DMC proxy because DataPower Gateway is an appliance and will take care of a lot of security features. These include data validations, encryption, as well as XML or any type of scripting or security threats that are present."
"Anybody can use it as their security device and as their multi-protocol handling device."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the appliance hardware, the software embedded within the hardware appliance machine, making it one of the best security platforms in the market that is easy to use, easy to install, and resilient for high availability."
"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."
"The support for IBM DataPower Gateway has been exceptional."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
 

Cons

"I think Azul Zulu can be improved by always thinking about productivity, as most languages tend to evolve in that direction."
"It needs a better update daemon. At this time the process is manual and could be an issue on multiple desktop deployments."
"Improvements for Azul Zulu could include more automated tools for unused code visibility integrated directly into the standard portal to help further optimize our cloud footprints."
"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"My experience with the pricing of this product is that pricing is too high and should be reduced."
"For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive, especially in the development test and UAT environment, where we can use the virtual version of the product."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"Some pre-packaged connectors for integration with various applications, such as SaaS offerings, would be a useful addition."
"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite big for smaller organizations, looking at different types of clients who are virtually assisted in this, I would say it's not really a good product for smaller firms."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The cost of this product varies from customer to customer and the relationship with IBM, including how many offerings from IBM are already being used."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"The total cost of IBM DataPower Gateway would depend on the configuration, but in my experience, it can amount to 60,000 Euros per box, even for the virtual version. Usually, customers need high availability and a non-production environment, so the total price for IBM DataPower Gateway can be quite a lot. It can be 200,000 Euros or a similar figure."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite expensive to get resources to work on this product. If the price could be cheaper, I think that will make it a little bit better and easily accessible to smaller clients. Then it could compete with other solutions that are available in the market. There's a whole lot of other solutions available that work well and are cheaper than IBM's products."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azul Zulu?
I think Azul Zulu can be improved by always thinking about productivity, as most languages tend to evolve in that direction. I have two projects that I am working on in parallel, one using Angular ...
What is your primary use case for Azul Zulu?
My main use case for Azul Zulu in the current project is developing the archiving and unarchiving system. I use Azul Zulu on the back end when I created a REST API, which I use together with Java S...
What advice do you have for others considering Azul Zulu?
My advice to others who are thinking about using Azul Zulu is to try to explore as much as possible what it offers, getting away from the conventional paradigm. I would rate this review as a nine o...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?
I don't know if the current licensing cost of IBM DataPower Gateway is high, but I think it's acceptable. I don't have any complaints about it.
What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?
I noticed that the Gateway Script libraries could be improved, as they are not covering everything I need.
What is your primary use case for IBM DataPower Gateway?
The primary purposes for which IBM DataPower Gateway is used include security purposes, and sometimes you need to put some configurations and mapping into the process.
 

Also Known As

No data available
WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Kyocera, OKI, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Voya Financial
RBL Bank, Availity
Find out what your peers are saying about Azul Zulu vs. IBM DataPower Gateway and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
919,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.