IBM DataPower Gateway vs OpenESB comparison

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IBM DataPower Gateway

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

IBM DataPower Gateway and OpenESB compete in the enterprise service bus and API management space. IBM DataPower Gateway holds an advantage in security and scalability, while OpenESB benefits from flexibility and an open-source nature.

Features: IBM DataPower Gateway offers robust security features, efficient API integration, and seamless management with built-in security. OpenESB stands out with its open architecture, adaptability for varied integration scenarios, and substantial customization capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM DataPower Gateway provides a structured deployment model and comprehensive customer support, ensuring smooth implementation. OpenESB allows tailored deployments due to its open-source model but may need external resources for support.

Pricing and ROI: IBM DataPower Gateway entails higher setup costs with long-term ROI benefits due to comprehensive features and support. OpenESB offers minimal initial costs, providing cost-effective solutions and quicker ROI owing to its open-source nature.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM DataPower Gateway vs. OpenESB Report (Updated: April 2025).

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. OpenESB

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

IBM DataPower Gateway

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (7th)

OpenESB

Ranking in Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

14th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 6.0%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenESB is 1.5%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi

Co-Founder at tenekit

Security features meets compliance needs and offers MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) that simplifies integration efforts

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.

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PaulPerez

Integration Architect at Pymma consulting

Enables us to define the business process and integrate it with other software

I used to work with Integration Bus. What is interesting is that the two products were made mainly by the same team, but OpenESB is lighter, you can run it on a simple GBM. It's lighter and has quite a few resources, no application server, and no database. This provides you with more intelligence because there is some kind of friction in the routing service, and you can play with that friction to provide some connection policy, like the last deployed policy. For example, if you were to install version one, and afterward, you deployed version two, automatically — if you decided that your connection will be the right deployed connection — you would be routed to the last version. If it doesn't work, you would just need to redeploy version one. Also, there are higher-level concepts, such as the interface of services, which allows you to define your interface and choose the method of implementation, like Java for example. On the other hand, with OpenESB, I am more connected. At the monitoring level, you can trust the level and replay the process, which is interesting, but because you have to store everything on the database, you have a conventional system that makes your system require more resources. The push ability to extract data from the process and then publish it in the data container is very interesting. For example, by using a database like Google's big data analytic search, you can create your own analytics from the data in your process without disturbing the process.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Its initial setup was straightforward."

"The performance is good. It's been very stable."

"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."

"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."

"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."

"The most valuable features for our business include the ability to monitor and log data transactions and handle multiple request at an enterprise level."

"The scalability of the solution is good."

"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pros

"OpenESB pushes the organization to clearly define service boundaries and interfaces. So it motives the business and the development teams to clearly define their business services and processes they want to implement. OpenESB supports fine and coarse-grain granularity for the services and supports top-down and bottom-up approaches for the services, processes definition, and composition."

"The process-oriented solution allows you to define choreography and orchestration."

"The core is very stable."

"One of the most valuable features is being able to implement business processes while keeping track of the design from BPMN to a BPEL Implementation."

Cons

"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."

"Traceability could be improved, especially for business operations. The traceability of the transactions could be an improvement point for DataPower to work on. It would be better if they provided JSON support. JSON protocol data has changed format. It started performing internal transformation to JSONx. This might be an additional complexity."

"It is a costly product."

"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite big for smaller organizations, looking at different types of clients who are virtually assisted in this, I would say it's not really a good product for smaller firms."

"The IBM community does not have much engagement from the IT community in Saudi Arabia and developers for this solution are difficult to find."

"The product's cost for data appliances or hardware is quite high. It needs improvement."

"Making it more user-friendly would be an improvement."

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

More IBM DataPower Gateway cons

"The documentation of the product must be improved. It could be tricky to find the right documentation on a topic since the documentation is spread in many places. I advise the new joiner to contact the community to get entry points and additional documentation. Tutorial and Video must be present to take up the product."

"Cloud deployment is weak and needs to be improved."

"The documentation needs to be better."

"Regarding its management, a web console being able to synchronize distributed instances would be great."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."

"The product is expensive."

"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."

"The licensing cost is very expensive."

"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite expensive to get resources to work on this product. If the price could be cheaper, I think that will make it a little bit better and easily accessible to smaller clients. Then it could compete with other solutions that are available in the market. There's a whole lot of other solutions available that work well and are cheaper than IBM's products."

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

"As far as I know, they have a perpetual license for this product. They are paying perpetual fees rather than an annual subscription or annual pricing."

"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pricing and cost advice

"There are two versions. The first is the community version, which is free and contains the last part of the feature, but if you want to get the Enterprise version, you'll have to pay €60,000 which covers support and two instances on production."

"The cost for the prediction instrument is high because it is charged per instances based on prediction, but the rest of the solution is free."

"The Community Edition is a full product you can use in production, it does not have limitations like other alternatives."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Hospitality Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM DataPower Gateway?

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?

I would rate the pricing a two out of ten, with one being high price, and ten being low price. It's high-priced for smaller companies. But it is okay for enterprises. So, the price could be more fl...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?

The DCDR process should be less complex. AI should improve developer efficiency and effort. Whenever I am writing code, it should give recommendations automatically by incorporating AI so I can wri...

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Comparisons

IBM API Connect vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 34% of the time

Apigee vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 8% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM DataPower Gateway Competitors

Mule ESB vs OpenESB

Compared 46% of the time

WSO2 Enterprise Integrator vs OpenESB

Compared 29% of the time

Oracle Service Bus vs OpenESB

Compared 25% of the time

More OpenESB Competitors

Product Reports

IBM DataPower Gateway

Download IBM DataPower Gateway product report

Download OpenESB product report

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower

No data available

Overview

IBM DataPower Gateway is a robust, secure next-generation enterprise-grade single multichannel API gateway that supplies dynamic access, integration, control, and outstanding security. The solution is available in a broad range of workload capabilities, including application programming interface (API), service oriented architecture (SOA), B2B, cloud, web, and mobile. These dynamic capabilities ensure users are able to quickly increase the reach of an organization's critical IT resources to new channels, which will provide shareholders, team members, and clients with safe, secure access at all times.

DataPower Gateway is very flexible and is widely available in virtual, cloud, traditional, physical, Docker, and Linux form factors.

IBM DataPower Gateway Features

IBM DataPower Gateway has many value-added features. Some of these features are included below:

Control: The solution provides decision point authorization and authentication for all standards, including Lightweight Direct Access Protocol (LDAP) and Open Authorization (OAuth), which allow for better access control across an organization’s entire network.
DataPower dashboard: The dashboard is specifically designed to enhance performance and determine problematic processes. The solution provides intuitive real-time performance transparency to diagnose operational and performance anomalies and offer repair and restoration recommendations.
Enhanced messaging: Users are able to easily mediate messaging and protocols by incorporating the best of today’s traditional and modern application standards.
Integration: IBM DataPower Gateway offers super fast mainframe connectivity, database connectivity, transport protocol bridging, content-based routing, and any-to-any message transformation, ensuring secure and immediate connect service.

IBM DataPower Gateway Benefits

IBM DataPower Gateway provides many benefits. Some of those benefits include:

Flexibility: The solution is easy to use and configure and provides for a pleasant, intuitive overall user experience. The solution can immediately be used out of the box, which makes overall process management simple.
Protection: The solution provides sturdy continuous service protection and application performance using robust powerful routing and traffic control.
Security: The solution’s enterprise-grade De-Militarized Zone (DMZ) ready gateway enables users to enforce the desired runtime application security across all messaging protocols.
Profitability: The solution’s design ensures significant reduction of development costs in addition to the streamlining of overall operations. Users are able to achieve reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) and experience a near-immediate ROI.

Reviews from Real Users

“My company has a good impression of IBM DataPower Gateway. What I like about it is that because it's an appliance, it's a turnkey solution that's very fast and out of the box. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products.”- Bálint T., Solution Manager at Intalion

“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.” - Sathyan K., Founder/Director at perfTech Solutions Pvt Ltd

IBM

OpenESB is a Java-based open-source enterprise service bus. It can be used as a platform for both enterprise application integration and service-oriented architecture. OpenESB allows you to integrate legacy systems, external and internal partners and new development in your Business Process.

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity

Information Not Available

IBM DataPower Gateway vs. OpenESB