webMethods.io Reviews

Most of our customers are real estate development companies, and they build many projects in Saudi Arabia. Most of their projects are about Smart Cities or Smart destinations. The use case was about integrating different Smart City technologies and enterprise applications. For government services, the use case was integrating webMethods.io Integration into different government systems serving residents. For example, the Ministry of Interior uses the solution for passport and ID services, so different government systems are integrated.

We used webMethods.io Integration as an integration platform. It accommodates Enterprise Service Bus, integration server and API gateway. We took the complete platform and the integration server as part of the platform to integrate or receive data from the API gateways, integrated with the Enterprise Service Bus.

The solution allowed us to integrate applications and IoT devices because it has an IoT event processing layer. It provides a flexible integration within the IoT systems because most of the applications we work with are related to the IoT and Smart City technologies. So, there's hardware, software and application integration, providing hosting flexibility.

Some platform providers host their applications in Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure, which sometimes creates challenges for data governance because of regulations.

Any solution needs continuous development in integration and processing.

We used the solution for more than a year for different projects. We used the latest version and stopped using it four months ago. It was deployed on private cloud in the customer cloud infrastructure.

The solution is stable. If there were any minor problems, we resolved them.

It can be scaled up and support multi-tenancy. However, it is difficult to maintain.

I rate the technical support a six out of ten.

The initial setup was straightforward.

They don't have a fixed price, and the pricing model is transaction-based. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with one being the worst and ten being the best.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. I recommend it, but it depends on the use case. I do not see any gaps with the platform.

I have used webMethods Integration Server in a variety of roles over the past eight years, starting as a developer and progressing to integration specialist where my work entailed building enterprise solutions to process a lot of data (millions of records each day) using event-driven architecture.

Our primary use case is retail integration where there are a lot of orders being placed daily, and where all the inventory needs to be updated in the centralized system. It's mainly in the retail and banking sectors, or anywhere transactions may play a crucial role, where I have used webMethods the most in my projects.

Typically, it is used where data has to be going to multiple systems on-the-fly, such that there will be minimal latency. For example, in an event-driven process where there is an action trigger for a piece of data or record to be forwarded to multiple systems when that action has been triggered.

The latest versions I have worked with include 10.5 and 10.3, however at the moment and for the past year I have been working with MuleSoft more than webMethods.

Our infrastructure is mainly on-premises, but we are starting to move to the cloud. Our target is to move everything to cloud, and right now we have a few instances on-premises and a few in the cloud, hosted privately with Microsoft Azure.

As for users, we are not directly exposed to the clients or end-users. Instead, we are mainly part of the middleware layer, whereas many of our customer-facing portals are different and distinct from one another. If we counted from one portal, the users may go into the thousands or even billions sometimes. It depends on the transaction type that is involved. For example, if you take any store of the multiple stores in operation, we will get a daily number of orders and that number of transactions will go through our system. Ultimately, it differs from region to region and client to client, but the numbers on any store can be from thousands to 10,000 or more.

One valuable feature is that it is event-driven, so when new data is available on the source it can be quickly processed and displayed. Integration is definitely another useful feature, and B2B is one area where webMethods has its own unique thing going, whereby we can do monitoring of transactions, monitoring of client onboarding, and so on.

There are many valuable things from an EDA perspective, and webMethods helpfully supports a lot of formats. Considering their market strategies, I think webMethods has it all. And now there is webMethods.io, which is a complete cloud-based solution provider. Unfortunately, they are mainly known in the market for their broker transactions, and this is a perception I believe needs to be overcome.

Lastly, although I'm not too sure about the latest features, I believe they also have a service designer now, where you can work out the particular package that you want. 

The certifications and learning resources are not exposed openly enough. For instance, they have a trial version which comes with only a few basic features, and I think that community-wise they need to offer more free or open spaces where developers can feel encouraged to experiment. Perhaps they can work on maintaining more of a community in order to build up a better knowledge base, which is exposed on the free plans and not tagged to a particular paid version.

Otherwise, I think they have already built all the solutions as an individual component, so what they have currently should be fine. Based on the market, the new features should come up as usual, and I hope to see a lot of connectors become available with regard to NoSQL databases, Salesforce, CRM systems, and so on. And with these, I mean plug-and-play types of connectors, where we can easily experiment and see which products work well in the integration scheme, and which will help us decide whether to go with webMethods or not.

I've been using webMethods Integration Server for over eight years.

Compared to on-premises, the cloud solution is not as stable. These days I see a lot of network issues and cloud servers going down, becoming unreachable for whatever reason.

The cloud plays a major role in its scalability. When it comes to on-premise, it's not that scalable, as you will need to have a server and a standard process around that which will reduce the delay. In general, it's not that easy to get a system scalable when it is on-premise, especially when compared with the cloud as it's much easier to scale a system horizontally or vertically with any number of resources.

Their support is always good. We used to have regular meetings with the vendor where they explained things and gave details about new features and products that are going to be launched down the line. And if there are any product bugs, we align with their support to get things sorted out. We have a good relationship and approach with the vendor, who adheres to their SLAs.

The initial setup was more of an administrator task, so I did not participate in it directly. However, as far as I know, the software that comes with the installer is a complete package so we just needed to install it. It does require a bit of information which needs to be addressed prior to getting installed, though.

When it comes to code deployment, the code and packages that we work on go through the servers with CI/CD pipelines.

We do our implementations in-house only, with the help of automation. The number of engineers needed depends on the requirements for each project. At this moment, there is one person who takes care of the automation and troubleshooting of issues because it's all centralized and we don't have a dedicated team to do the deployments.

As we are all into different sectors, we typically release with all the teams together, and the release window doesn't account only for the team or the tools we're using, but it is also dependent on the complete functionality desired. So when there is a deployment planned with other teams, everyone has to release their code and do a round of testing, and then validate if everything works properly. It has multiple verifications and if something goes down then we have to report it. As such, I don't give timelines because it depends on the release, but typically webMethods' package deployment doesn't take that much time unless there are network issues.

I am not involved in the licensing side of things.

Whether you decide to use webMethods largely depends on the architectural landscape that the customer is looking at, and in particular what kind of flow data they want to process. It's always a matter of first getting the customer requirements, and then going with the tool that is easiest to implement and use.

Overall, I would rate webMethods Integration Server a seven out of ten.

This solution is primarily used for protecting our APIs and web services. All of our APIs are exposed to the outside world, so our internal network is protected by the API gateway. Our landscape inside the company is also divided into different domains and if you go from one domain to another domain, we also want the APIs to be protected.

We have two servers with an API gateway and a load balancer in front of it.

We also use this solution for monitoring, to know how many transactions we have had and who is using our API. These are the runtime capabilities.

Another thing we use this product for is governance, to govern the lifecycle of our API services. It will tell us the state of the service, who is responsible for it, and what deliverables belong to that stage, and we also have some quality checkpoints inside the lifecycle.

With respect to the end-to-end lifecycle management of APIs, this product is very good, feature-wise. We have the ability to govern the end-to-end lifecycle; in the different states, we can do the necessary customization and add our own flavor. This helps us maintain it very well.

The API governance capabilities for enforcing standards and security policies are quite good. However, it is a new product that started a few years ago, and you can sometimes tell that it is new and still evolving. For example, there are some bugs and problems that are still being fixed as it is further developed. They are evolving the features and we are happy with the product, but there can be more issues that arise as things change.

These quality checkpoints allow us to have a central team that reviews the deliverables of the service. In the Design phase, for instance, we will review the REST API interface to see if it matches our standards.

This solution has enabled us to create new channels for growth because we can quickly introduce new APIs. Sometimes, you need to quickly set up a marketing campaign with an application that needs to happen fast. The API gateway allows us to introduce APIs that are still good and protected but in a fast way.

We have a good overview of all of our APIs, including who is providing them and who consuming them, which allows us to better work together to resolve issues before they emerge. For example, if there are changes made, we have a better view of the impact and the team can start discussing it. Also, if we are deprecating services and removing them, we know who is using these APIs and they can be contacted in advance.

Another important point is that when a new application wants to use an API, it can provide the necessary information such as the number of transactions. With this knowledge, the provider can adapt accordingly and it will be possible to add it.

Using the product has provided us with a structured API management program. Because we have governance and knowledge about all of the APIs, we have a better overview. Knowing who is using an API, or who is going to use it, means that it is easier to introduce new things.

This solution has given us a competitive advantage because we have better automation and insight. Without it, a lot of automation would not be possible, and doing it manually would take more time.

More generally, this API gateway has improved the way our organization functions because it allows us to enable more partner integrations. Until now, most of our business-to-business integrations were going over EDI. With API instead, it will allow us to onboard other partners. The reason for this is that EDI is a very heavy format, which is very expensive. As a retail company, EDI is affordable when you have a large vendor. But sometimes we have smaller vendors, and if we force them to use EDI, it will sometimes block the ability to sell products to us because they can't afford the complete functionality of sending invoices or receiving orders.

What we are now doing with API management is to make the order and invoicing systems available via API. These smaller vendors can then use these APIs to send an invoice or to receive an order.

The two most important features are the lifecycle and the protection of your APIs.

On the topic of protecting your APIs, every API management solution has that, which is the core business. Without it, you don't have an API gateway and it's the basic setup that every API management solution needs. Of course, protecting your APIs is very important.

With respect to the lifecycle, it is helpful because, in our business, we find it important to have an overview of all of our APIs and to guide our different roles, including architects and solution developers, in the necessary work for delivering a web service. Depending on the type of service, we also want to govern the quality. We don't do it for all APIs but for some categories, we find it very important that the quality is at a high level. This means that we want to govern that and review it.

In these aspects, this solution helps us.

In relation to the lifecycle features, the user interface and the performance can be improved. It is not the quickest application and the user interface is not the most up-to-date. It's a tool that has existed for quite some time, and there haven't been a lot of improvements.

With respect to the API gateway, the runtime component, and the stability after a new release is something that can be improved.

I have been working with the webMethods API Gateway for approximately five years.

Once the system is set up and configured properly, it's stable. We don't have outages and it runs very well.

There are two ways to scale this product, and both of them are easy to do. The first is to add another server to your cluster, and the second way is to add more CPU power.

I would rate the technical support medium-high. It is comparable with other companies; not worse, but not especially better.

In general, I am happy with the support but my complaints are about the timing. Specifically, if your issue can be handled by the first line then you get feedback quickly. However, if the issue is complex then it needs to go to R&D and it takes time. This is the same experience that I have with other companies.

Positive

We did not use another similar solution prior to this one.

The installation and initial setup are complex. It is not possible to just keep clicking the Next button during the setup. You need to configure the system such that it works best for your environment. You should plan for deployment over three to six months, at least.

My advice is to involve a consultant from Software AG to help you with the setup. Of course, this is an on-premises situation. In the cloud, I don't know how easy or difficult it is.

We have seen ROI from this product and we are able to determine this because of our internal accounting. When a project starts, we always calculate what our benefits are with respect to the technology. Taking into account the number of web services and APIs that we have, we're pretty sure that considering the cost of governance, this solution is better than if we were not using one.

This is not a cheap solution but, compared to other products such as those offered by IBM, the pricing is similar.

We did evaluate other options including IBM API Connect and Apigee. Feature-wise, these products are comparable.

Given that we were already using webMethods, using the API gateway had some benefits. There is value in staying with a single vendor, with the advantage that it is easier to integrate with other products in the webMethods stack.

We did not consider using any open-source alternatives.

This solution provides a fully customizable portal that has built-in testing capabilities, although we haven't implemented it yet. This is something that we are planning to do within the next couple of months.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to involve consultants who are familiar with it because they can help you to best set it up. Also, think about the process and steps in your governance because this is a workflow and you want to be sure that it follows the procedures that you have in place.

Overall, I'm happy with the product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage digital transformation. 

webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience. 

I have been working with the product for ten years. 

The solution is stable.

webMethods.io is scalable. 

webMethods.io's technical support is amazing. They have different mediums for communication, such as chatbots, emails, and phones. The response is based on the incident severity. They respond in a day even if the incident is of low severity. 

Positive

I have used IBM Message Broker and Apache. The product is much easier, and you do not need to have extensive knowledge. 

webMethods.io's deployment is not difficult and can be completed in a few hours. 

The tool is worth its money. 

webMethods.io is expensive. We have multiple components, and you need to pay for each of them. 

The product incorporates different layers of security, ranging from denial-of-service protection to IP denial and other features aimed at enhancing security. Given the importance of safeguarding information from exposure and unauthorized access, maintaining strong security measures is our key priority.

The solution focuses on low-code and zero-code approaches. This means users don't need extensive technical expertise. Instead, they can use drag-and-drop functionality.  I rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use it to manage and secure APIs. It is particularly useful when dealing with a large number of APIs from various systems like banking, government validation, and more. It makes sure data is accurate and protected and helps systems work well together.

What I like the most about the solution is that it comes with ready-made tools like handling security tokens and OAuth. API Gateway does the hard work of keeping things secure and managing who can access what, making it easy and safe without lots of custom work.

One area for improvement in webMethods API Gateway is orchestration. Currently, API Gateway lacks built-in orchestration capabilities, so organizations may need to rely on other applications for this purpose. For example, if you are calling two services and one of them fails, you may need another application to handle the rollback or recovery process. Improving orchestration within API Gateway could simplify complex service interactions.

I have been using webMethods API Gateway for almost two years.

The technical support is a bit slow. It took them more than two weeks for a single ticket. I would rate it a seven out of ten.

Neutral

Setting up webMethods API Gateway can be easy or complex. It depends on what your company needs.

It is an expensive solution and not very suitable for smaller businesses.

My advice to people who are considering using the solution is to keep in mind that if you have a background in software development, especially with Java, you will likely find it easier to work with the platform. Overall, I would rate webMethods API Gateway an eight out of ten.

The solution offers a services catalogue that extends beyond monetization, acting as a source for API for external users and entities and monetization.

webMethods API Portal is overall very valuable. It is now a comprehensive API catalogue that serves various purposes, including API assessment and evaluation. The monetization module is particularly robust. It is applied across different sectors, including the government, and is known for its strong performance.     

The improvement needed is related to the model's position. As of now, it seems to be more of a conceptual idea rather than a widely implemented solution. Monetization is currently on the rise, driven by the growing demand for APIs. With everything being provided as APIs nowadays, it's crucial to grasp this concept and establish a robust solution for subscription plans and the price model.

I have been using the webMethods API Portal for the last seven years.

Since webMethods API Portal is regularly used by big enterprises, the performance needs to be the best. There can be no issues whatsoever, so it is stable. 

webMethods API Portal offers extensive scalability. Its primary focus is on catering to enterprises dealing with vast amounts of data or APIs. This solution appears to have certain minimum requirements that enterprises must fulfill to access it or make requests. It seems to be a compatible solution designed specifically for large enterprises managing huge data volumes. I would rate it seven out of ten. 

The support is available 24/7 and they are extremely experienced.

Positive

For APIs and gateways, I have experience with various platforms such as IBM MessageHQ, Microsoft Remote, and an Apache tool. In the case of IBM, there was a registry and certain tools that stood out, particularly the initial versions of the API gateway. These early versions were rather basic and targeted more toward experts or developers familiar with the system. While not the most user-friendly at the time, I believe IBM has likely evolved its offerings to include more advanced and user-friendly solutions. However, I acknowledge that my feedback might be somewhat outdated.

The initial setup is straightforward, but it requires extensive knowledge about the product.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

I don’t have much idea about prices, but webMethods API Portal is not cheap. 

The suitability of the webMethods API Portal depends on the organization's size. It's not appropriate for small or medium enterprises; rather, it's intended for larger enterprises. This is particularly in cases like ours, where it's utilized for managing big data APIs. As an example, we employ it to oversee the government's resources and permissions on a daily basis. This illustrates the significant volumes of data and APIs we handle regularly.

I like the solution's policies, transformation, mediation, and routing features.

The product should provide more customization options. Application of policy management is not easy. We have to do a lot of customization and configuration. Documentation is also a problem. Understanding the overall architecture is difficult.

I have been using the solution for five years.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the scalability an eight out of ten. Ten people in my organization are using the solution.

I rate the ease of setup a seven out of ten. The installation is pretty much easy, but there are some obstacles. The interoperability of the components is not that easy.

The time taken for deployment depends on the knowledge of the people deploying the solution. Three to four people from our organization took about a month to set up the entire stack. It had a lot of components. It had an API portal, Command Central, CentraSite, Trading Networks, and Active Transfer.

I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The product is very expensive.

I am using the latest version of the solution. The improvements depend on the vendors. MuleSoft has got different areas of improvement. Software AG has different areas of improvement. We are planning to move the product to the cloud. My advice for the product users depends on their business model, the scale of their business, how much volume they have, and what kind of transaction management they need. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

The solution's most valuable features are web services, XML transformations, and adapters.

The solution's release management and JSON services need improvement.

We have been using the solution for 20 years.

The solution is stable. I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable. We have enterprise customers using the solution. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten.

The solution's technical support needs improvement. It could be more accessible in terms of communication.

Neutral

The solution is easy to set up. I rate the process a seven out of ten. It takes two months to complete. 

I recommend the solution to others and rate it an eight out of ten. It works fast and is easy to adapt.