My main use case for IBM API Connect is to connect APIs more quickly. A specific example of how I use IBM API Connect is that we have many APIs and IBM API Connect provides a one-stop solution.
IBM API Connect - Full lifecycle API management
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Rapid api connectivity has streamlined workflows and has provided detailed analytics insights
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
IBM API Connect has positively impacted my organization because it provides better detailed analytics, which makes things easier for us. It simplifies processes by using AI to help automate tasks and work.
What needs improvement?
We are relatively new to IBM API Connect, so I do not have significant improvements to suggest at this time.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM API Connect for the last month.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I do not handle the pricing, setup cost, and licensing details.
What other advice do I have?
The advice I give to others looking into using IBM API Connect is that it really depends on people's use case, so depending on the use case, it might or might not fit their solution. I gave this review a rating of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Supports secure API governance and enables automated CI/CD integration with strong policy enforcement
How has it helped my organization?
IBM API Connect has a designer and CLI features which can be used to completely automate the API. The way we use it is different. We really do not need an app dev team in order to create, design, and deploy an API. If a business analyst has a basic understanding of what the input and output payload is, they can directly create the API. We have automated the process. A business analyst fills out an entire Excel sheet with input and output payloads. That payload is fed to IBM API Connect commands and generates the YAML out of it, which is compliant with Open Standards 3.0.
IBM API Connect by default has all the features that are specific to CI/CD processes. IBM API Connect has a rich set of policy management features. We can achieve centralized control over API policies for governance and compliance. If a security team requests compliance features, we can fit IBM API Connect to address or secure whatever needs come out of the security team. All the enforcements can be done using IBM API Connect.
What is most valuable?
IBM API Connect is an API Gateway. It is purely for securing enterprise-wide APIs from the outside world. It best fits as an API Gateway in DMZ zones. It has a lot of features. It supports OAuth, third-party identity providers, and MFA as well. With the introduction of IBM API Connect V10, it also supports integration with multifactor authentication.
IBM API Connect has a designer and CLI features which can be used to completely automate the API. The implementation approach is different from typical processes. We do not need an app dev team in order to create, design, and deploy an API. If a business analyst has a basic understanding of what the input and output payload is, they can directly create the API. We have automated the process. A business analyst fills out an entire Excel sheet with input and output payloads. That payload is fed to IBM API Connect commands and generates the YAML out of it, which is compliant with Open Standards 3.0.
IBM API Connect by default has all the features that are specific to CI/CD processes. IBM API Connect provides policy management features. We can achieve centralized control over API policies for governance and compliance. Whatever a security team requests in terms of compliance features can be addressed through IBM API Connect to secure the necessary components. All the enforcements can be done using IBM API Connect.
What needs improvement?
When comparing IBM API Connect with DataPower Gateway, there are many features in DataPower Gateway that are not available in IBM API Connect. Some examples would be connectivity to MQ is not available in IBM API Connect. Custom code needs to be written in order to connect to MQ and exchange messages. This can be achieved, but it is a tedious task. Custom extensions need to be built in order to connect to MQ and exchange data. Additionally, there are enhancements needed when it comes to segregating APIs based on domain.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We did not go with the model of scaling based on licensing. We have a centralized pool for the entire middleware IBM middleware stack, which is quite close to 400 plus licenses. It is distributed among IBM MQ, IBM Ace, IBM DataPower, and IBM API Connect. As far as licensing is concerned, it is pretty flexible. It is not tied to a single product.
How are customer service and support?
Support is extremely good, especially with Sev 1 issues. The research team is brought into calls whenever needed. The support team is strict on their SLAs.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
What other advice do I have?
The overall review rating for this product is 9 out of 10.
User-Friendly with Great Integrations, but Debugging APIs Can Be Tricky
What do you like best about the product?
It is very user-friendly. The product natively provides integrations with GraphQL and AsyncAPI, which enables a full service discoverability within the Dev Portal. This capability provides a self-service service consumption.
What do you dislike about the product?
Debugging API's might get somewhat difficult
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
securing API's (often proxies) to the public world
Have addressed performance challenges while benefiting from flexible subscription models and reliable user access
What is our primary use case?
We use IBM API Connect for healthcare projects, not for telecom services.
What is most valuable?
The best features IBM API Connect offers in my experience are the middleware capabilities, as it can connect the front end.
You can be more secure using JWT tokens with IBM API Connect. We can optimize API access, which will be more secure. We can add some policies to provide extra security, protect your backend, validate the consumers, and analyze based on the traffic limit to throw things out.
IBM API Connect helps with security by using OAuth 2.0 and basic authentication.
User management to authenticate the user is an important feature worth mentioning.
IBM API Connect has positively impacted my organization, as customer experience is good. Based on the subscription, we can handle the subscription, and customers use the environment as a handler, making the mechanism easy.
Based on the implementation, you can see improvements in onboarding speed. If this is a direct application, you can validate with the user and get the response from the application. If you require multiple transactions, it takes time.
What needs improvement?
To improve IBM API Connect, based on customer experience, you could work on latency. You can increase scalability and availability. If you're connecting with any other cloud, it connects to the infrastructure which needs to be managed with the customers and cloud providers, so if you have a setup, we can handle it easily.
I have faced latency issues on the server, related to our management. If you need to stabilize your server based on peak traffic, you need to configure the scalability model. You need to know when traffic peaks, so use auto-scaling when traffic comes. If the application is not in use, the value should be zero, and it starts from zero. Based on customer experience, the value will increase, and when there is no customer servicing, the peak would be reduced, making the value remain zero. Following this approach, you should be able to optimize costs and satisfy customer experience.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using IBM API Connect for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In my experience, IBM API Connect is stable enough, but downtime depends on traffic and backend server configuration. If your backend server is down, you may experience downtime. If it is functioning well, you won't have a bad experience and your application becomes more reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
IBM API Connect's scalability is good, as you can handle it easily similar to how you manage cloud providers.
How are customer service and support?
I haven't reached out to customer support yet; there is a separate team for that.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment from using IBM API Connect, as we created multiple plans based on customer usage. In those plans, we can reduce traffic, and based on the traffic, we can optimize the cost.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I have not worked on pricing, setup cost, or licensing for IBM API Connect; that part is handled by the architect.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did not evaluate other options before choosing IBM API Connect, as I mostly worked with Apigee. It depends on the provider; IBM API Connect allows movement into on-prem architecture, while Apigee is primarily a cloud solution.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using IBM API Connect is that it's a good platform to learn from. You can create API proxies easily, implement features effortlessly, and maintain them without hassle. There is also a support team available. It's a bit similar to Apigee and stands out as a unique platform.
Regarding a business relationship with this vendor beyond being a customer, I believe my vendor subscribed to IBM API Connect, and I'm working in the healthcare domain, so that's the vendor basis I believe.
I don't have any additional thoughts about IBM API Connect before we wrap up; it's a good opportunity to learn.
On a scale of 1-10, I rate IBM API Connect a seven out of ten.
A solid API management platform that works well for basic to moderately complex solutions
What do you like best about the product?
- It offers a good balance of features, security, and usability.
- It has a User-Friendly Interface.
- Solid for Mid-Level Use Cases
- It has a User-Friendly Interface.
- Solid for Mid-Level Use Cases
What do you dislike about the product?
Learning Curve for New Users is a little high. While the interface is well-structured, beginners or those without prior exposure to IBM’s ecosystem may find the initial learning curve steep.
Occasional Bugs:
The platform does occasionally exhibit bugs or inconsistencies, which can impact the developer experience. Most issues are manageable, but they can be frustrating during critical development phases.
Occasional Bugs:
The platform does occasionally exhibit bugs or inconsistencies, which can impact the developer experience. Most issues are manageable, but they can be frustrating during critical development phases.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Mainly centralized API management, Security and Access control.
Development efficiency increases with API gateway's security and integration features
What is our primary use case?
I primarily use IBM API Connect as an API Gateway to expose enterprise APIs to the outside world. Most applications I have worked with consume APIs deployed as part of the API Gateway for internal use.
What is most valuable?
Some of the best features of IBM API Connect are the Two-Way SSL and features similar to those in IBM DataPower Gateway. The key difference is how APIs are interacted with and bundled as a product. The API Gateway eases the development of REST APIs but retains the security features of IBM DataPower Gateway. It offers significant development efficiency, reducing man-hours from eighty to four when creating APIs.
What needs improvement?
When comparing API Gateway with DataPower Gateway, several features in DataPower Gateway are absent in the APIC layer. Examples include the lack of connectivity to MQ. Custom code is required to connect to MQ and exchange messages. Enhancements for segregating APIs based on domain are needed. Auto-approval of APIs for non-prod environments has been requested. These were not developed in version 10.5.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
The initial setup of IBM API Connect is straightforward. Although version five was tedious, version ten doesn't take much time for infrastructure setup, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Production-ready deployment in multiple sites can take about a week with high availability.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I would rate the stability up to nine, almost ten. The runtime engine for the APIC Gateway is still a DataPower component, which has been stable in the industry for about fifteen years. Stability is evident in the transaction execution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
With container versions, scaling up or down the gateways deployed into pods is a two to three-minute task for the operations team. It is not complex. The introduction of container versions has simplified scaling.
How are customer service and support?
Support is excellent when it comes to APIC. However, the performance issues with containerized versions of DataPower, observed during migration from legacy VMware to OpenShift Container Platform, have affected the extent of support.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
The company where I work did not have an API Management solution before choosing IBM. We evaluated MuleSoft and Apigee but opted for IBM API Connect due to pre-existing IBM Middleware infrastructure.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is not complex. While version five was somewhat tedious, version ten requires less time to build infrastructure, both on-prem and in the cloud. Production-level deployment would take about a week to achieve.
What about the implementation team?
The deployment shouldn't take more than one resource with approximately a week's effort.
What was our ROI?
Development efforts minimized significantly. Reducing development hours from eighty to four for an API was possible due to reusing existing scripts from DataPower.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Pricing depends on how many instances run across environments. I don't deal with licensing, but compared to other IBM products, the licensing is not significantly higher.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing IBM API Gateway, we evaluated MuleSoft and Apigee.
What other advice do I have?
IBM API Connect was chosen mainly for its compatibility with existing scripts and frameworks, minimizing development effort, especially in aspects like authentication, logging, and auditing. I would definitely recommend it. Overall, I rate it nine out of ten.
I am a senior software developer. I have worked as full stack developer and DevOps Engineer
What do you like best about the product?
I love security features and features like rate limiting and throttling
What do you dislike about the product?
UI can be improved and pricing is a bit higher comparatively
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Overall API creation and management. It helps us in security and scalability of our APIs.
best for API Management life cycle
What do you like best about the product?
IBM API Connect is IBM Cloud based technology useful for API management lifecycle including development and administration.
What do you dislike about the product?
Limitations of Analytics data extraction
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
For SOAP and RESTful APIs, API development and management is easy with IBM API connect. IBM Analytics helps to keep the data for monitoring and troubleshooting.
Clean and organised monitoring of API!
What do you like best about the product?
Recently i got the oppurtunity to work with IBM API Connect, It comes very handly for management and deployments of API's.It provides seamless tools for API managing and developement, thoughout the API lifecycle starting from design to deployment and deprecation of API.
What do you dislike about the product?
Though it provision end to end platform for management of API but still i feel more tutorials and walkthroughs can help beginners to learn the API integration faster.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Using the build in tools offered by IBM API connect, we designed API for accessing product details and fetch order history, the design phase was quite easy, special thanks to OpenAPI support and also it helped us to deploy API gateway.
IBM API Connect - Enhance & Secure your APIs
What do you like best about the product?
IBM API Connect is a single API Management solution where it provides the high security, easy to develop the APIs, we can publish the APIs to socialize. IBM API Connect will be integrated with IBM DataPower Gateway where it will acts as gateway which provides high securtiy where it will be acts as a proxy. In the latest version of API Connect the advanced features are released where we can discover the APIs before moving to API lifecycle and we can governance the APIs using API & Product level rulesets.
And the implementation for the administartor is quite easy and the support provided by the IBM Support center will be helpful which facing any production down issues.
And the implementation for the administartor is quite easy and the support provided by the IBM Support center will be helpful which facing any production down issues.
What do you dislike about the product?
IBM API Connect in the latest version for the analytics server the deployment profile was deprecated which will needs to increase the additional RAM for the servers.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Developing of APIs and publishing through the developer portal site is helping the APIs to reach more in the society and publicity.
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