IBM DataPower Gateway vs SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management comparison

IBM and SAP are both solutions in the Application Infrastructure category. IBM is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while SAP is ranked #22. IBM holds a 3.3% mindshare in AIS, compared to SAP’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution.

IBM DataPower Gateway

Read 31 IBM DataPower Gateway reviews

5,122 Views
615 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

SAP NetWeaver Business Rule...

Read 2 SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management reviews

194 Views
192 Comparison Views

0% willing to recommend

IBM DataPower Gateway

SAP NetWeaver Business Rule...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

IBM DataPower Gateway and SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management compete in enterprise middleware solutions. While IBM is known for its robust security, SAP is preferred for its advanced rule management capabilities.

Features: IBM DataPower Gateway offers robust security features, encryption protocols, and application-level monitoring. SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management provides powerful business rule automation, rule management capabilities, and adaptability to business changes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM DataPower Gateway is noted for a smooth deployment process and extensive customer support. SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management involves a more complex deployment due to its rule management features but also offers responsive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: IBM DataPower Gateway is perceived as more economical with quick ROI, appealing to budget-conscious businesses. SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management, despite a higher initial cost, may yield superior long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Application Infrastructure Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Application Infrastructure

January 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 881,082 peers since 2012

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 Application Infrastructure

7th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (5th), SOA Application Gateways (1st), API Management (11th)

SAP NetWeaver Business Rule...

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

22nd

Average Rating

6.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.3%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Infrastructure Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM DataPower Gateway	3.3%
SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management	1.2%
Other	95.5%

Application Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

AkshaySawant

Manager at CSB Bank Ltd

Security features excel but development limitations emerge

We are using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes. As per the development perspective, there are some limitations with IBM DataPower Gateway because it only supports XML and XSLT language, but it does not support the Java language. This is the only limitation of the IBM DataPower Gateway. For the authentication and authorization purpose, we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. It's a very good product. We are mostly using the IBM DataPower Gateway for security purposes and load balancing purposes. If we are handling the load for a particular server, then we can use the IBM DataPower Gateway. The IBM DataPower Gateway is mostly used for security purposes. If we have some APIs and we are using some security for those APIs, then we can use it. It can also be used as a load balancer. It's also used for certificate management, user management purposes, authentication, and authorization. For routing, the IBM DataPower Gateway has multiple URL-based routing and content-based routing capabilities. If we have multiple URLs, then we can use an XML script. Using the XSLT language, we can configure multiple URLs and implement URL-based routing. Content-based routing means if we have multiple requests, we can route the request to a particular URL. For this, we need to use the XSLT language only. We can't use XML, Java, or other scripting languages. With IBM DataPower Gateway, we are using all the APIs. All APIs have been configured on the gateway. We have configured the particular TLS profile and some TLS client profiles as well. Using that TLS profile, we have configured the APIs and authentication. We have configured some tokens also, including JWT tokens and different types of auth tokens. There is also a rate limiting feature which we use for handling API loads.

Read full review

Herve Guerin

Architecte SAP & Infrastructure at Teamwork

Good stability and good visibility but requires a better user interface

We're an SAP partner. We do also deploy some clients to the cloud, but 95% of the work we do with the solution is on-premises. I'd rate the solution six out of ten. I'm an architect, so I don't know enough about the implementation side to really be able to share any relevant first-hand experience in regards to setting the solution up.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."

"I like the tool's security. Also, all functionalities are integrated within on platform."

"What I like most is the stability."

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

"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."

"It is a scalable solution."

"The solution is stable."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pros

"There are many features of the solution that are quite useful. For us, the most valuable aspect may be visibility."

Cons

"One area that could be improved is the integration with Postgres and SQL databases. Currently, IBM DataPower Gateway only integrates with Oracle databases."

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

"The components that they include in the product that are, in fact, a WTX, really need to be removed from the product because they tend to fail."

"Additional documentation needs to be provided for complex automations."

"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."

"They should add features to manage API integrations."

"They should improve the solution's clustering features."

"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."

More IBM DataPower Gateway cons

"The solution could improve its user interface."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."

"The solution has a return on investment but is a little expensive."

"The cost of this product varies from customer to customer and the relationship with IBM, including how many offerings from IBM are already being used."

"It's expensive when you compare it with others."

"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."

"The licensing cost is very expensive."

"The total cost of IBM DataPower Gateway would depend on the configuration, but in my experience, it can amount to 60,000 Euros per box, even for the virtual version. Usually, customers need high availability and a non-production environment, so the total price for IBM DataPower Gateway can be quite a lot. It can be 200,000 Euros or a similar figure."

More IBM DataPower Gateway pricing and cost advice

Information not available

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Infrastructure solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

29%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	17

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?

This product is definitely expensive because if any issue occurs in the live environment or production environment, and our organization faces some issue with the IBM DataPower Gateway, then the IB...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?

The developer portal should be an integrated part of IBM DataPower Gateway to improve it. I think it is fine as is, and maybe no other additional features should be included in the next release. My...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

IBM API Connect vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 40% of the time

Apigee vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 7% of the time

Kong Gateway Enterprise vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon API Gateway vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft Azure API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM DataPower Gateway Competitors

Apache Web Server vs SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management

Compared 100% of the time

More SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM DataPower Gateway

January 2026

Download IBM DataPower Gateway product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Infrastructure

January 2026

SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management report

Download SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management product report

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower

NetWeaver Business Rules Management

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

SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management (SAP NetWeaver BRM) is part of the SAP NetWeaver AS Java. SAP NetWeaver BRM enables your organization to externalize business rules and manage them flexibly across multiple installations for greater agility, for consistent and transparent enforcement of policies across the entire enterprise.

SAP

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity

Dansk Supermarked A/S, Ego Pharmaceuticals Pty. Ltd, Kaeser Kompressoren, Lenovo

Buyer's Guide

Application Infrastructure

January 2026

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, IBM, F5 and others in Application Infrastructure. Updated: January 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best Application Infrastructure vendors.

We monitor all Application Infrastructure reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.