Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM BPM vs IBM DataPower Gateway comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

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

IBM BPM
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (8th), Process Automation (6th)
IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 3.2%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 4.6%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Kamran - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient processes and intuitive workflow with many valuable features
You will have access to make any needed changes. Additionally, the review will be published on PeerSpot.com in written or audio format, available to other people. You can stay anonymous if you wish. Notifications and the use of the review are subject to PeerSpot's terms of use, which you can find at PeerSpot.com/TOS. I would give the solution an overall rating of ten out of ten points.
Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Security features meets compliance needs and offers MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) that simplifies integration efforts
While I like IBM products, I'm not an evangelist. I work with Java, Microsoft ASP.NET, and various technologies. I'm not tied to any specific vendor. However, I do find IBM to be a bit greedy. It's a large, profit-driven company. The support team is mostly based in India, and they follow a very structured process and protocol. Sometimes, it feels like playing ping pong with them – lots of back and forth before the problem gets escalated. You might even have to get your sales rep involved to push things along. For me, the support it could be better. Indian support teams aren't inherently bad, but with IBM, it feels impersonal. They respond, sure. But if it's a complex technical issue, they might ask you a lot of questions that just seem designed to waste your time. Sometimes it feels like they hope you'll get frustrated and solve the problem yourself.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Scalability is good. In the time that I have been there, we have added more JVMs to help with the increased workload, so it does scale."
"IBM BPM should become cloud-native. It should also add a cloud deployment feature."
"It has reduced a lot of manual errors and processes."
"Integration is a big plus for me."
"The solution is stable."
"The initial setup process is easy."
"Setting it up is fairly easy. If somebody has knowledge of the system, he or she will be able to do it fairly quickly."
"They have some quick-win programs that are designed to come in, they'll bring a developer in and they'll work with your developer to get you started. That's what we did and that worked really great. We got an understanding of the product, we got an understanding of how to deploy the product. And when we were done with that engagement, we were off and running."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"I like the API Gateway feature."
"It is easy to use, easy to install, and it's resilient for high availability."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."
"My company has a good impression of IBM DataPower Gateway. What I like about it is that because it's an appliance, it's a turnkey solution that's very fast and out of the box. Compared to other gateways, I also like that IBM DataPower Gateway is function-rich. For example, for one of the projects, there was a need for specific transformation and security features available in IBM DataPower Gateway out of the box, so my team just needed to configure the appliance. There was no need for separate development, and I found it quite neat. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
 

Cons

"IBM BPM is stable, but sometimes there are issues with the server."
"We are a government organization, and we are the largest government power sector in India. We generate around 30% of power in India. Therefore, our processes are quite complex. Although IBM BPM is a low-code or no-code software, if you want to have extremely complex workflows, just the business process diagrams are not helpful in creating those workflows. While implementing complex workflows, only the process flow diagrams did not help us. We had to write a lot of Java scripts and Java queries to achieve what we wanted. Its integration capabilities with the SAP environment have to be improved. At present, we are only talking at the web services environment level. Its price also needs to be improved. It is currently expensive. Previously, Active Directory required a heterogeneous environment, but now they want a homogeneous environment. We had onboarded employees through Microsoft Active Directory, and now I have to implement Microsoft AD only from the cloud for my vendors."
"The setup was quite complex because the solution was cutting-edge at that time and IBM invested considerably in the implementation, likely at a loss to themselves."
"The integration could be improved."
"Finding errors and bugs on the system is not easy. We can't seem to use the events or logs to find them, so it makes it difficult to debug the system. They really need to work on their debugging features to make is much, much easier. It would improve the solution considerably and should be something they add in a future release."
"The initial setup process is complex for basic users."
"Performance in the development environment space. I know that they have been taking it off the desktop version and putting on the web, and it is not 100% yet."
"The debugging needs improvement. There is some confusion surrounding the debugging."
"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
"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."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"An area for improvement in IBM DataPower Gateway is its price point because it's a relatively expensive product. Sometimes, when the customer use case is just a very small subset of what's being offered in IBM DataPower Gateway, then the product can be expensive, making my company lose some of the opportunities because of the expensive pricing. A lower price point for IBM DataPower Gateway, even if that results in a less feature-rich version, would be appreciated. In terms of additional features that I'd like to see in the next release of IBM DataPower Gateway, nothing specific comes to mind because IBM constantly improves its standards and provides quarterly updates to the product, so it's quite fine."
"We are always looking for more features wherein it could be easily integrated with cloud applications. We are looking for either a cloud solution or a cloud integration option."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It gives us a good return on investment."
"We chose to purchase IBM BPM because it was bundled with the actual RPA program/solution that we decided to purchase. We decided to use Automation Anywhere tool (RPA), and it is was bundled with IBM BPM."
"It may be cheaper for organizations to pay for the Viewer licenses that are immediately up and running in the cloud, rather than paying for someone to administer publishing to an intranet."
"​We have definitely seen ROI. When we first kicked it off, we said it had to pay for itself within three years, and it did."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten."
"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten."
"The price is good but could be a little lower."
"The cloud and license of the subscription model for IBM BPM can be complex. There are a lot of alternatives to choose from."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"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."
"As far as I know, they have a perpetual license for this product. They are paying perpetual fees rather than an annual subscription or annual pricing."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Infrastructure solutions are best for your needs.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
What do you like most about IBM DataPower Gateway?
The MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) is great because it allows you to easily expose services using various protocols – web services, REST (JSON), and others. This flexibility simplifies things.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?
I would rate the pricing a two out of ten, with one being high price, and ten being low price. It's high-priced for smaller companies. But it is okay for enterprises. So, the price could be more fl...
What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?
The DCDR process should be less complex. AI should improve developer efficiency and effort. Whenever I am writing code, it should give recommendations automatically by incorporating AI so I can wri...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
RBL Bank, Availity
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. IBM DataPower Gateway and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.