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We have a global banking customer who uses IBM DataPower Gateway to expose their APIs for customer use.

You don't have to have a separate DMC proxy because DataPower Gateway is an appliance and will take care of a lot of security features. These include data validations, encryption, as well as XML or any type of scripting or security threats that are present.

From a security point of view, being an appliance in the DMC zone, IBM DataPower Gateway will take care of the entire security angle for the infrastructure.

The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better.

I've been using this product for more than five years now.

It is stable, and the performance is good as well.

It is easy to scale as the product itself has the capability to install it as a cluster. So it can be scaled vertically or horizontally.

We have a team of about 10 developers and 10 to 15 enterprise customers globally.

For this particular product, the technical support is good.

I would give them an eight out of ten because there are some stability issues related to new features that have been added. They could have tested them and released them later rather than releasing them right now.

Positive

The initial setup is pretty straightforward because it's an appliance, so you don't have much complexity from an installation and configuration perspective. I would give the setup process a five out of five.

We implemented it in-house. It hardly takes any time; perhaps a day or two.

The only maintenance you need to be worried about is upgrading the patches, and you need to make sure that you apply those on time. We have two people who are responsible for the maintenance and administration.

This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment.

The licensing cost is based on the PVU and will depend upon the number of CPUs used for the virtual appliances.

If you are buying the license based on the PVUs, then you won't have any additional costs because all of the features will be available. However, if you are not going with the product with the PVU and you're going with certain features, then you will need to add those features, specifically security features, and pay for them. That is, there are certain features that are on a pay-per-feature basis if you are not going with a PVU license.

I would give pricing a rating of three out of five.

If you are an enterprise customer, I would definitely advise that it is better to go for IBM DataPower. You won't need to have a proxy or any other security measures required in the DMC, and it is easy to implement and easy to maintain and scale.

Overall, I would rate IBM DataPower Gateway at ten out of ten.

It functions as a gateway. We use it mainly as a security appliance, as a gateway for web services (including REST services), and for data transformation.

We didn't directly use it for mobile/web integration, but we have used it extensively with SAP middleware.

I was working for Volkswagen at the time, and Goodyear uses SAP middleware. We used DataPower to expose web services. This allowed us to connect our system with their SAP middleware to exchange tire orders, handle refunds, and other similar processes.

The security aspect is the best part. 

The security features helped meet compliance needs. You can manage your SSL keys within the appliance. It also provides monitoring and reminders. For example, you can get a notification three months before a key expires to prevent unexpected problems due to expired certificates.

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.

DataPower isn't the most user-friendly tool. It is not an easy tool to use. Some things could use better wizards to guide you through processes. 

Also, the SSL key management is a bit convoluted because keys need to be managed in multiple places. It can be tough at times. Better organization there would be nice.

I have been using it for eight years. 

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. It's really quite stable. If there are issues, they're usually the result of user error.

It wasn't very scalable. Our setup wasn't very scalable because it used a hardware appliance.

You can achieve better scalability with solutions like Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift, or even VMs. But at the time, the focus was on a hardware appliance. 

If you want to scale using appliances, it's horizontally scalable – meaning you'd need to buy more appliances and set up load balancing. That wasn't planned due to the expense involved.

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.

Neutral

We haven't extensively used the load-balancing features of DataPower. Our setup was primarily using a single appliance.

Our setup involved a different team working with an IBM expert. They handled the installation, and then we started using it through the web interface.

The pricing was not cheap, it was quite expensive. However, the pricing landscape might be different now. The market is more competitive, with players like F5, Cisco, and Siemens entering the space. IBM might have adjusted pricing in response.

My recommendation depends on a few factors. If the client is already invested in IBM solutions like MQ or mainframes, then DataPower could be a great fit, budget permitting. 

But, if they're not tied to IBM and have budget constraints, there might be more cost-effective alternatives on the market – things like API gateways from F5 or others. 

It also depends on specific needs and architecture. Ultimately, it's a decision best made by an enterprise architect who can evaluate the whole picture.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.