IBM API Connect Reviews

We're trying to make our business available on the net so that partners can connect, and distributors can use our services.

Its speed and performance are valuable.

It's based on a little bit dated architecture. A lot of evolution has happened after that. It's an evolving field. Kong is a Kubernetes-based platform. Kong runs on Kubernetes, but all the other ones are in microservices. So, there's a lot of improvement that can be done.

I've been using it for three years.

It's stable.

It's good. There are a lot of other good products also.

We didn't access their support much.

It's pretty much straightforward. We just downloaded and installed it.

I'd rate it a six out of ten.

We are a regulation entity dealing with many sensitive services. We carry out supervision and regulation for FinTech companies and other financial institutions. We are partners with IBM and I'm the project delivery director.

In general, this is a powerful system. We're currently only using one or two functionalities from API Connect. One of them is consulting WSRR to get the endpoints which is a powerful component. Each API management has a Gateway located on the DMZ that can be exposed to external networks and does the authentication, authorization, some security functionality as filtering, checking the security aspects such as decrypting, encrypting or service transformation and other functions. The development portal is good and can be used by external developers who can develop it at their site.

One issue we have with this solution is its complexity. In addition, it doesn't handle large volumes of traffic very well. 

I've been using this solution for several months. 

The stability is good. 

Scalability is reasonable but not great. 

Customer service takes a while to respond. They also want a lot of information and this adds to the time involved in getting a response. 

The initial setup is not easy, similar to other IBM products. It's quite complex even with a system integrator and the deployment took some time. We have around 15-20 users on the development side. We plan to increase that in the future. 

All IBM products are expensive and API Connect is no exception. The license includes everything such as a per BVU charge along with other integration components plus OpenShift for microservices and DevOps and others. You can purchase a better BVU and then you can use any features or components under this license. They have the Cloud Pak for Automation package which includes BAW Business Automation. They also have something called Aspera for file transfers. 

We evaluated API Connect and Apigee. API is designed to be a comprehensive solution for building and managing API with features for designing, development, and distinct publishing APIs, as well as for managing the life cycle of API and enforcing security. Apigee on the other hand is designed primarily as an API management platform while focused on securing and scaling APIs for use by extended developers. Ultimately, the best platform will be the one suited to your specific needs and use cases. 

API Connect is a standalone platform, which means it may require additional integration with other tools in order to support the range of API developments. API Connect is designed to support the management of large numbers of APIs but may struggle to handle large volumes of traffic or very complex APIs.

It's helpful to have a suitable in-house team and to work hand-in-hand with the system integrator. You also need powerful infrastructure and hardware. If you're exposed externally, you have to apply security standards either on the Gateway or F5, or the Load Balancer. It requires the capabilities for good enterprise or solution architecture and sufficient experience on the integration side in order to have the right solution design and system architecture.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

Our use cases for IBM API Connect include the banking sector, where they use the solution to integrate with third parties, so all of the third-party connectivity for the banks happen through IBM API Connect.

We also built the government service website, for example, e-Government services, and the government published all services between the government entities and the businesses, so there are two connections: government to government and government to business. All the services and entities were published and consumed through the IBM API Connect gateway.

What's best about IBM API Connect is the excellent administration. The development tool that builds the API is also very simple, and user-friendly, and it doesn't consume too much time.

Another valuable feature in IBM API Connect is its good reporting feature, particularly for operations, but the most valuable feature of the solution for the customer is security. IBM API Connect provides a DMZ and a security gateway between the external and internal environment, so you can publish your API safely.

IBM API Connect can also integrate with any tool or middleware that works on open standards without the need for development or coding, so integration with the solution is easier.

Technically, I haven't faced any issues or areas for improvement in IBM API Connect. There wasn't any concern that the customer asked that we couldn't resolve or achieve. I'll need to check with the technical team if there was any issue with the solution, but from the top of my head, I haven't faced anything that the customer requested or anything that needs enhancement in IBM API Connect.

The implementation of IBM API Connect is complex, as it's an enterprise solution with many components that require more than one person. It's not a single product that you work on, and this is an area for improvement, but normally, it's good.

Having a more structured model for IBM API Connect support is also room for improvement that would help customers better.

I've been working with IBM API Connect for the last five years.

IBM API Connect is a stable solution. It's used in government services, and my team barely receives calls about the solution. IBM API Connect is also used in major banks here in Jordan, and it's stable. There are no complaints about it.

IBM API Connect is a scalable solution. It's deployed based on the Hybrid Entitlement model in IBM which gives the customers five million API calls per month, and if the customers need more, it's just a matter of buying an additional license to make it ten million API calls per month, so customers can build any environment that meets requirements and do production HADR tests without paying a lot more for the license.

As IBM API Connect is subscription-based, it's good, and it allows customers to scale as much as needed without exceeding the number of API calls. Most of the customers do not reach that limit anyway. If a customer needs to go beyond the limit, he can get a CPU-based license, but at the moment, I haven't had any customer who needs a CPU-based implementation of IBM API Connect.

The technical support for IBM, in general, isn't the best. You'll need to understand the internal setup of IBM or you need to have a partner who understands the IBM setup to get the best support from IBM. There's a program that IBM offers, the AVP, where a consultant is set aside for you or the customer, and that consultant will provide support to you.

For the technical support focused specifically on IBM API Connect, the team is good. The team of engineers is responsive and knowledgeable.

We haven't worked with other solutions similar to IBM API Connect, but we're considering another alternative from Open Source, though we haven't decided which product we want to work with.

The initial setup for IBM API Connect wasn't complex, but for the new model or the containerized model, the setup for the three nodes or containerization wasn't as easy as the normal on-premise setup or the traditional way of implementation, so the first time my company implemented the new model, it was complex. The complexity wasn't because of IBM API Connect, but it was because of the RedHat OpenShift platform beneath it, though after my team did it once, the next implementation became easier and simpler.

The price for IBM API Connect is reasonable. It's $20,000 to $30,000 yearly for a subscription, and the pricing could vary around $40,000 per year, per subscription. Its price is reasonable for customers who have around sixty million API calls yearly for unlimited environments.

I haven't evaluated other options, but I've heard about Apigee and that it's a good solution. I've heard that Apigee is technically better than IBM API Connect, but I don't have the facts on why it's better. What I heard from the customer is that Apigee is more costly than IBM, and that customer paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in Jordan. The customer contacted my company for a POC for IBM API Connect, so it seems that the customer didn't get value from Apigee based on the money he paid.

There's also MuleSoft, but I didn't see a real implementation in Jordan where there's anything extra or different from what IBM API Connect provides, and I have no idea about MuleSoft pricing.

The Jordan government accepted IBM API Connect because of the security and stability of the solution, and in terms of project implementation, it was the best project implemented that's based on DataPower and API Connect.

I'm still working with IBM API Connect.

I'm an implementer, system integrator, and reseller of the solution.

Mostly I have mid-size and enterprise customers for IBM API Connect, though I also have small-sized customers. My customers use the solution.

Most of the customers here in Jordan prefer an on-premise deployment for IBM API Connect, but my company also has cloud implementation, one public and one private, then the rest is on-premises.

My advice to people who want to start implementing IBM API Connect is to always start small. You need to understand the value you want to gain from implementing the solution, focus on business values and achieve those, then start to grow bigger later. Don't start with a big environment when implementing IBM API Connect that wouldn't result in any business value. Starting small with real business values that will touch on business needs is good advice for anyone who wants to implement IBM API Connect.

My rating for IBM API Connect is nine out of ten because it's a good IBM product. It's one of the products you can easily sell.

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. 

Having more integration and compatibility with different platforms is what I'm expecting in the next release of IBM API Connect.

The issues with this solution are mainly around support. Recently, people were discovering that WSO2 is commercializing it, because initially it was just open source. Right now, because they are commercializing it, the intro licenses are as costly as IBM. People say: "IBM is tried and tested", so it's people who know this who'll go the IBM API Connect route. Other people who just want to try out a more scalable solution, on the other hand, will go the open source route. Others will either just do the cloud version, because everything is less maintenance, while other people prefer doing everything themselves, e.g. in-house, from scratch.

IBM API Connect should offer more versatility to its users, because they only give you a specific level of the versatility, and this is something IBM should heavily invest on.

I've been using IBM API Connect since 2015.

I find the stability of IBM API Connect to be fine.

IBM API Connect is scalable, but scaling it is expensive, depending on what kind of hybrid or software you want to use with it. Every client has a different policy and deployment need.

The technical support for IBM API Connect is standard.

The issue with IBM that many people have realized is that there are times when the person logging those complaints actually needs to know the product. With other products or with competitors, you just need to tell them about the issues, and they'll guide you on what the problem might be. Support for IBM API Connect varies spec to spec, depending on your support level and the questions you have with whoever sold you the software.

I use different API management solutions because I'm a consultant. A customer might have IBM API Connect, while another customer might have Apigee. It also depends on what the customer has. All I do is strategy and implementation, while other people just want a consultant to deliver on specific vendors. It ranges from customer spec.

I've implemented this solution through a vendor team. I've always used consultants, partners, or integrators for implementing products.

Pricing for IBM API Connect varies. If they are offering me the platform, in particular what they used to call Bluemix and what's now called IBM Cloud, it will be subscription-based pricing. They'll charge you based on how many APIs are called off your specific portion of the Cloud.

If you're doing your own private cloud, on the other hand, it's a special grade. You have to own most of that software licensing so that you can put it on your own private cloud.

I've evaluated X-Ray, WSO2, Software AG, Oracle, DataPower, and Apigee.

I do integration and I do API management. I do a lot of other things. I don't just use one product. I use various products depending on what the client asks.

For API management, I've used X-Ray, WSO2, Software AG, Oracle, DataPower, and Apigee. It all depends on what the customer has. I also have a personal experience with IBM API Connect.

How this solution is deployed depends on you. What matters the most are the gateways and the portals. The portals are mainly for onboarding. Whether you'll deploy it on-premises or on cloud is up to you. You can also do hybrid deployment in some instances, because there are people who do hybrid deployment, but the key component for aligning a deployment is mainly the portal and the gateway, because the gateway is the policy enforcement, while the portal is mainly for presentation and onboarding purposes.

Other people are running IBM API Connect, but others are not. They just prefer using their hybrid appliances, e.g. the DataPower, so it also depends. There are cases where you can just simply deploy this solution, but it still depends on the policies that you need to enforce. That's why I was saying the key components are the portals and the gateways, because the gateways are doing most of the work. The gateway handles the transactions. It does all the heavy lifting. The portal is mainly for presentation purposes.

I've used WSO2 and Software AG, and when you compare them with IBM API Connect, the principles are more or less the same. It's more on how you want to deliver the solution and what the true need of the customer is. You get people who are using it proactively, and that puts the products on the market and drives innovation, but you also get people who are really less integrated people and just build APIs on the portal. It all depends on the use cases and what the customers are offering.

The products are all different in a way, e.g. comparable to cars. A Mercedes Benz is really not that different from a BMW. It's just more of the driving dynamics, the comfort levels, and what the brands represent. A BMW will always be sportier than a Mercedes Benz, while an Audi will always be sportier than a Mercedes Benz. This is unless you're going for the real topnotch specs: the AMGs, then it becomes a different conversation. At the end of the day, it depends on the appetite and what their initial use cases are.

The number of users of IBM API Connect all depends on the deployment plan of the customer. You get fintechs, e.g. these are mainly coalitions with banks and financial institutions where they try and drive innovation through these tech companies. By giving them access to their assets through portals and APIs, they get to see most of their IPEs realized and used by other parties. These are the people that they couldn't even reach initially. It all depends on the specs and on the range.

As for technical people, I've seen that they don't have a preference in terms of tools, but it's a matter of where the product goes that gives them an inclination to stay with those, because that stack gives that effect. It's also a matter of how they can easily integrate with other components, e.g. how they can be incorporated in your two clouds, or your other CMS, to in-house. The user experience is the same as others.

The number of users of IBM API Connect can be increased. I've seen a portal that has 4,000 to 5,000 users, and these users are people who create products, e.g. applications. A lot of those apps utilize existing portals and their APIs. What's common on my standard is more payment gateways. Every institution will offer their own payment gateway, and offer a specific sense of liability they are comfortable with.

I'm not really recommending IBM API Connect to others. It depends on the investment. For people who are heavily invested in IBM, IBM API Connect is an easy solution, because you already have the underlying infrastructure, e.g. DataPower, which is the most important or expensive component of this solution. For other people, if they don't have it at all, it makes no sense to go the IBM API Connect route if they're using a different stack. As long as the product is working, and it's compliant to specific patterns, it doesn't really matter what you use. What really matters is your budget, what do you have in your storage, and use case levels.

If people just want to have something that they can try quickly and dirt cheap, anything else will do, but then, a lot of people are also struggling with adversity, because they feel like the universities or employers are not that heavily invested, and this means they're failing the present capabilities. You just need to show them how the platform works, so it still varies from customer to customer. It's also budget based.

From a ranking of one to ten in terms of features, I can rank IBM API Connect as number six. WSO2 is a five. I'd give X-Ray a four. Software AG is a number two. Apigee ranks number one for me.

In terms of flexibility, all these platforms are the same. They are the same, but they can be different in terms of target limits.

I'm rating IBM API Connect a seven out of ten. I can't give them a ten out of ten, because I feel that they have lost their touch with it.

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.