IBM API Connect Reviews

I use IBM API Connect to make migrations with different systems. 

We have used the cloud and on-premise deployments of the solution.

The most valuable features of IBM API Connect are its performance and user-friendliness. 

Improving the documentation would be beneficial as it currently presents navigation challenges. Incorporating a step-by-step guide could facilitate the integration or migration of various systems, including databases. The existing documentation only comprises plain text, hence incorporating more interactive instructions could enhance its usefulness.

I have used IBM API Connect within the last 12 months.

We are having some issues with the stability of the solution.

I rate the stability of IBM API Connect a seven out of ten.

We have approximately four people who use this solution in my organization.

I rate the scalability of IBM API Connect an eight out of ten.

The support from IBM API Connect is good.

I rate the support from IBM API Connect an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have no prior experience using a solution similar to IBM API Connect.

The initial installation was not simple. We had some issues with the deployment but we managed step by step. It took approximately two months to complete the implementation.

We use a team from IBM that assisted us with the implementation.

I rate IBM API Connect a seven out of ten.

We deploy APIs to expose the BFFs of mobile apps, and this is mainly in the cloud. All mobile apps consume the APIs of your BFF. On-premise, we have APIs that expose services and mainly functionalities, such as the balance of the client or the customers or the products.

One of the most valuable features is the easy-to-use web interface.

Documentation for the CLI is not very complete. Also, the support could be improved, and we have had several problems with backing up and restoring the product.

We have been using the solution for two or three years.

The stability of the solution is good.

The scalability of the solution is good.

IBM support is not available in Chile, so we must go through other countries to get a response from customer support.

I would rate the setup as a medium in difficulty. 

The solution was first set up with the help of IBM, but when we moved to another environment, we followed the initial instructions given by IBM and implemented it ourselves. 

We used Bamboo as a pipeline for automatic deployment of the API. The deployment took four hours.

The product is easy to use, but the installation is not easy. We have a team of three architects who maintain the product. I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten. 

I primarily use API Connect as a front end for any station, through which you can expose services to external or internal customers.

API Connect's best features are its data gateway, one of the strongest in the market, and its API manager, which has the local assembly transformation UI, which helps transform services from Maximal to JSON or vice versa.

API Connect's analytics subsystem could be improved to make it easier to render content from the analytics system and offload it to an external database.

I've been using API Connect for over eight years.

There are some issues with API Connect's stability, with parts going down abruptly sometimes. Its stability doesn't compare well to Epigee or Kong API, and I would only rate it seven out of ten.

API Connect is easy to scale, I would rate it nine out of ten.

IBM's technical support is terrible - they're incompetent and slow to respond, even sometimes not responding at all until they have every bit of information.

Negative

I previously used Epigee, Kong API, and 3scale.

The initial setup was a bit tricky and required a lot of installation and system administration skills. I would rate the setup two out of ten. The deployment took around two minutes and could be automated.

API Connect is expensive - I'd rate their pricing five out of ten.

I wouldn't recommend choosing API Connect unless you have a big budget and need an enterprise solution. I would give API Connect a rating of seven out of ten.

We use this solution for rest-based, micro services to complete authentication. We are able to gather statistics and audit and throttle traffic. It also has a developer portal that allows users to browse their APIs and develop applications on them. It has solid features compared to some of the API services management services out there.

This solution is ready to scale and already supports our agile CICD.

The integration of cloud-based services is where we're looking for improvement in this platform.

We have been using this solution for four years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution but scalability would come at a higher price. This solution supports our organization of 50,000 people.

The initial setup is reasonably straightforward.

We consciously decided to go with microservices to enable us to move quickly and to building the flexibility and capabilities in our applications. Whether the business is able to translate those investments into profits and returns is too early to tell.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

We use IBM API Connect for external communication with outside partners and external companies doing business with our company. 

This solution is deployed on-premises. We are currently using Version 5.0, but we are upgrading to version 10.0, which is a cloud-based solution. 

One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it protects our backend system. We are exposing services to external parties and using this solution to protect the backend system, and to have a navigation in between. 

The installation process could use improvement. I hope that in the next release, the installation process is easier. 

My company has used this solution for at least four years. 

There have been some internal issues within the product that have caused instability.

This solution is scalable. 

API Connect is not straightforward to install. If you don't have a lot of dependencies in your organization, it will take a short amount of time. In our case, we took at least a month because of dependencies to other departments in the company. 

For our technical team, we have approximately 10 people, a combination of managers, admins, and engineers. 

We provide this solution to customers. 

There aren't any additional costs for the consumer solution. There is no cost for the consumers to use the services because we don't monetize the services. 

We have plans to upgrade from this solution. We are upgrading to ensure that we have a supported version late next year, in November or December, and are evaluating alternative solutions in the market. 

I rate API Connect a seven out of ten. This solution is stable, but maybe not the most modern product on the market. 

My clients mainly use API Connect as an API gateway. A lot of the backend services need to be exposed to other parties, mobile devices, interfaces, etc. 

API Connect's most valuable feature is its ability to act as a gateway. It's very easy to configure security and everything else in it. You don't have to kill yourself implementing custom configurations. Sometimes the customer wants to incorporate their identity provider, and API Connect handles that without any problems. 

One thing about API Connect that could be improved is the security schemes. There are so many security schemes, and from a product perspective, IBM could improve the user experience of the configuration security scheme. It does what it is supposed to do, but it could be easier to configure. The junior developers sometimes find it a bit confusing to configure even though they understand the concept.

And another thing is that I don't know the security policies that we have. For instance, we have a service account, which is needed to connect to some other services. So in those cases, I find it a bit hard to tweak things in the API gateway. And one could argue that it is not the right thing to do with the API gateway. It has a different place to be, which could be why they haven't put it there. But sometimes, you have to tweak around that, and I find it a little bit hard to do that. So if they could accommodate that in there, it would be better for some people.

I've been using it for the last four years on and off. The last time I deployed it was a few months ago.

API Connect is reliable.

API Connect is scalable, but I've found that everything is more stable if you reset the server every 40 or 45 days. Once, we had an incident in which we were unsure about what happened, but it crashed after 60 days. We didn't know the reason. It could've been a mistake in the product implementation. We don't know what happened, but this particular incident occurred two times. After that, we began restarting it every 45 days. So that's the resilience part, but the scalability part works without a problem.
Another thing is that we don't know all of the use cases that we have worked on before, so we didn't go for automatic scaling of the API gateway. That's done in the backend services. So I'll be honest to say that we haven't explored the auto-scalability of API Connect much. Instead, we put that on full throttle. This can cause a bottleneck if we play around with it, so we didn't take many risks. We put that on full throttle and did the tweaking in the backend services. That's how we did it in the past.

I've interacted with IBM support many times. They're good. They get back to you within 12 or 14 hours after you initiate a ticket. IBM support will get on a call with you if needed and guide you. It's no problem. They provide the same level of support to everyone. 

Setting up API Connect is a straightforward process. Maybe it seems more manageable because I've been taking baby steps rolling it out for the last few years. So when we talk about the latest version, it's not a headache if you follow the documentation. Even for an operations person, it's a piece of cake. 

It takes a minimal amount of time to deploy as a product. Including the processes for the organization, installing the product could take half a day. And when we ask the Ops team to do it, it usually takes half a day for them to do it. They have to document the IP and keep a log of what they're doing. 

API Connect itself does not require any maintenance. But when our teams write the business logic into it, that usually requires some support and maintenance. So a team of two people looks after the whole setup. And they work in shifts. Usually, it works on an onshore-offshore model. So one person from the onshore team will be supporting it for some time, and when he goes off, the other person comes up. 

API Connect's license cost could be a little lower. But, unfortunately, there aren't many open-source API gateways. Ideally, some new developers could come up with a minimum-functionality open-source solution. When I look for open-source resources that work with API C or Apigee, I find very few that can do that. It's not available or very popular in the open-source community. I've only worked with large companies that are capable of affording these licenses.  A better option for smaller companies might be to have two or three developers build a custom API gateway. That might be more affordable for them.

I rate API Connect seven out of 10. I would recommend it to customers if they have the money to pay for it, but it depends on the ecosystem. So, as a consultant, I would recommend API Connect if the customer already has an IBM license. Big companies generally have IBM middleware running somewhere, so they might have a license for these things. In cases like this, we would usually recommend API Connect for their purposes rather than spending more money on a different product. And if a client is building something entirely new and has to get a new license, we'll compare the options, including Apigee, MuleSoft, API C, or a custom solution. 

We are using IBM API Connect to integrate bank applications. We are linking frontend services with the backend to prevent unwanted penetration.

I have found IBM API Connect to be highly secure, efficient, easy to deploy, and has a great GUI. It can operate and integrate well with other vendors, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

I have been using IBM API Connect for approximately two years.

The solution has a modern cloud and it has been stable and reliable. We have not had any breaches of security.

The solution is highly scalable, you can scale up and down. It has good performance, and you are able to customize the APIs to what you want.

The support we have received from IBM has been great, they have been very responsive.

I have previously used Oracle API gateway. When comparing the two, they are both very reliable and have good APIs but IBM on-premise installation is more flexible.

The installation was difficult with the IBM toolkit.

We have an architectural roadmap to follow while doing the implementation of the solution and it took approximately three months for our teams to complete. I had some support from IBM during the process.

The price of the solution is very expensive, it can turn many customers away.

The solution is very good and might not be suited for everyone's use case. Organizations might not need such a robust solution that is priced as high as it is. The demographics can play a role in if this solution is suitable, it depends on what others are using to make it competitive. For example, in Africa, the use of this solution is very low, they are not thinking too much about security. However, if your organization wants to take its operations to the next level then this solution might be the right choice.

I rate IBM API Connect an eight out of ten.

Right now, our use cases are all internal. It's all API socialization internally. With version 10, we'd like to go externally with an actual API marketplace, however, we haven't gone there yet. 

I don't publish; I manage infrastructure. My role is to implement the infrastructure, maintain it, and enable the developers to leverage the technology.

The older versions of the solution were fairly straightforward to install.

The solution offers a pretty good SLA.

We deal a lot with technical support and typically they do help. We need them as we often can't find the documentation that would help us circumvent their services.

We've had some issues upgrading to the latest version of the solution.

The documentation could be improved. When we download a fix that was expected to be seamless to install, it wasn't. In the past, it was easy just to go to any product and download the documentation. If you had the license, you download the product, install it, look at the documentation. Only for specific cases would you have to reach out to support. Now it is like we know that, for these products, we're going to have to call or engage at some point with support. It's painful right now. It's not a smooth installation.

A hybrid cloud enablement would be very useful. We tried to stand up a gateway in IKS and we were told by support that that was not possible. Yet, the technical people, the designers of the solution, started saying, no, you can actually do it. However, they never said is supported, so I was never sure where the solution stands on hybrid clouds. 

The answers that sometimes are provided are not very comforting. If it isn't a full commitment it isn't going to work.

They need to make it a product that can be downloadable and installable and workable without having to engage with them directly.

I've been using the solution extensively for at least the last 12 months. We've been working with it since at least 2017. It's been a few years at this point.

Since we're mostly talking about Version 5, which is a very old version, I would have to say that it is not scalable. The memory gets too high and it affects operations. We had to request another server and it cost us money, even when we were doing a migration. Even if we wanted to go to Version 10 we have to still apply what is called a Fix Pack to the old version to have a separate infrastructure.

We have about 100 developers that use the solution currently.

We have to go through the levels of support. We open a ticket and then we try to engage. I have contacts that I can go directly to. However, if the documentation was better, we would need to interact with them less.

We are currently looking to change over to another vendor.

I actually did the initial setup for Version 5.0 which took a long time to install. It was easier, I think, as we're moving to newer versions. It is due to the fact that we've included Kubernetes and this style of installation that we're doing today which is a little bit more complex. 

The original was not nearly as complex as it is today. 

We're having some issues. If I go from Version 5.0 and I want to upgrade to 2018, I have to request new servers and then migrate all of the APIs. This is the same for Version 10 which wasn't a commitment, however, there was a communication that they would have an upgrade in place by the end of the second quarter and it didn't happen. We spent all 2018 to 2020 installing Version 2018. Now, we're told if we want to go to Version 10, we have to set up new infrastructure.

We tried to do the 2018 installation in three or four weeks and we handled it all in-house.

I cannot speak to an ROI.

We have an SLA we can draw from. I need to keep within certain numbers, however, I don't have a problem doing so. I can't speak to exact costs.

I haven't had a chance to compare the solution to other products yet, however, the plan is to move away from this product. We still need to do the research.

We are a direct customer and end-user. We aren't a partner of IBM.

We're not using the latest version of the solution right now. We have in production the original version - which I believe is Version 5.0. It was the original version. We worked all those years since 2018 and we're having some challenges to go to Version 10 which is the latest version.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten.