IBM API Connect Reviews

We use this solution in a hybrid way. All the processes and data is in the cloud but the API gateway is part of the API Connect solution and runs on prem in Argentina, connected to the cloud.

The management of the API and API portal is good. 

The monetization of the API could be improved. The pricing for the consumer is also very important to improve this solution. Nowadays, we are sending information to other tool in order to process out of API Connect. They could improve this internal service in order to have the balance for the consumer's API for different companies, external to our company.

I have been using this solution for three years. 

This is a strong and stable solution. 

The initial setup is complex. When setting it up, you will need support. We are using AVP support from IBM. Its an extra support service. I would recommend using this kind of support because it will help your company move quickly in order to set up the different products. IBM AVP stands for accelerated value program.

I would rate this solution a nine out ten. 

My customers are using IBM API Connect for integration in the financial sector.

The most valuable feature of IBM API Connect is the security of the protocol.

IBM API Connect could improve the security of the application and the integration.

I have been using IBM API Connect for approximately five years.

We have seven users using IBM API Connect and plan to increase the usage.

The technical support from IBM API Connect is good.

I rate the support from IBM API Connect a five out of five.

Positive

We pay for the IBM API Connect monthly. We only need to pay the standard licensing fee.

I rate IBM API Connect an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for rest-based, micro services to complete authentication. We are able to gather statistics and audit and throttle traffic. It also has a developer portal that allows users to browse their APIs and develop applications on them. It has solid features compared to some of the API services management services out there.

This solution is ready to scale and already supports our agile CICD.

The integration of cloud-based services is where we're looking for improvement in this platform.

We have been using this solution for four years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution but scalability would come at a higher price. This solution supports our organization of 50,000 people.

The initial setup is reasonably straightforward.

We consciously decided to go with microservices to enable us to move quickly and to building the flexibility and capabilities in our applications. Whether the business is able to translate those investments into profits and returns is too early to tell.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

API Connect is mainly used as a gateway solution to expose, secure, and manage APIs. 

Using API Connect allows us to quickly create proxy APIs and saves time on end-to-end testing, which lets us deliver quickly to clients.

API Connect's most valuable features are API management and creation.

The developer portal could be easier to customize - as it's Drupal-based, I have to hire a Drupal developer to do it for me. I feel there should be a drag-and-drop or UI-based configuration to customize the developer portal. In the next release, I would like some support for file uploads and MQ integration.

I've been using API Connect for six years.

The newer versions, from 2018 forwards, are quite stable.

API Connect is scalable because it's completely containerized.

IBM's technical support is very good.

The initial setup was straightforward, and deployment took two days.

I did the implementation myself.

I would say that if you want stability and security, you should go for API Connect. It's a very robust product that lets you easily create and manage your API. I would rate API Connect as nine out of ten.

We provide social security services (nonprofit) to our tenants and their customers.

Our goal with an API gateway is to separate our own clients in our extranet from the server implementations. We want to provide a unique point-of-contact for the client application(s) while having several server components at the backend side.

Furthermore, we need a single-sign-on solution and mapping of services.

Everything needs to run an OpenShift 4.x private cloud with no (or very restricted) access to the internet.

Unfortunately, this solution resulted (at least for us) in more problems than expected. We had severe installation and upgrade issues (maybe due to the nature of our network which is closed to the outside). One of those upgrades took, including problem solving, three people three weeks. Luckily, this was not in production, but if it would have been, we would be lost. This is the main reason for choosing another solution.

Also within the specific version, a map operator was missing (which was needed) - so we would need to write mappings on our own in JavaScript.

When API Connect is running, it is a stable solution (just do not change it).

Also, managing products and catalogs was helpful and it would be helpful for (as in our case) companies that need to run a multi-tenant concept. 

The developer portal is based on Drupal which is in itself very powerful. The service provider view and the consumer view are totally separated (however - the look and feel are also different).

From a starter perspective, using OpenShift, the operators to install are all there.

The statistics component is easy to use. You get your information at your fingertip.

Installation is weak. We (three people) ran into so many problems that I would, as an engineering manager, give this back to the development team. 

Too many secrets (even if they are set by default, we had problems).

The big footprint of pods, a complex network of them. This should be simplified.

To me, the product looks over-engineered. On the other hand, documentation needs more examples, this is "under-engineered".

They need to provide debugging facility for service implementations and policies (see gravitee.io for an example)

I've used the solution for one year.

Although we had our problems, I would say it is very scalable. 

Technical support is too slow.

Neutral

We did not previously use something else.

We took on API Connect although it was not Number One on our shortlist as we had a large contract with IBM which includes also this product.

The initial setup was too complex (we had problems).

We worked with a certified external consultant company.

Be sure you do not run into installation or upgrade issues. 

Our problems here were caused by our closed environments, however, still, it is in the dark of the systems where the problems are.

We also looked at:

• MuleSoft
• Kong
• Gravitee
• KrankenD
• WSO2

People should also consider support. We had several times to contact the support, and quite often we got a response after some days of the kind "please send this or that additional information". This does not help to solve quickly.

We used API Connect for OPIE management. About 50 developers in my company are using it. 

API Connect is a good product, and everything works fine. All the analytics are good, and it is easy to follow up. I like it in that sense. I'm more focused on following up on analytics by seeing how many API calls we are getting and where we see a lot of problems. I was working on that API level.

We used API Connect for at least three years.

API Connect's stability was okay. We ran it on top of the Kubernetes cluster, so it wasn't a standalone service. In the worst-case scenario, API Connect couldn't stay online if all the containers went down. We had to restart all the services. We shut down all the containers automatically one by one. That was the only problem. It didn't happen often— maybe three or four times in two years — but it was still somewhat problematic. API Connect is not fully cloud-native in that sense.

We outsource maintenance to a local company in Finland. They built it for us and maintain it.

API Connect was highly expensive for us, but the decision to switch was made before I joined the company. It seems like the company bought it, but they didn't know how to use it. After two years, they decided to reevaluate and conduct some cost estimates. 

I rate API Connect eight out of 10. If you are using a microservice like Kubernetes, that should be tested to ensure it's working. If you are running API Connect on top of Kubernetes, you trust that you can update the Kubernetes cluster on the fly during the daytime.

In our case, every time we had to update the Kubernetes cluster that API Connect was running on, it was so much work. We could update all the other clusters with no problem. So my advice is to make sure that it is working. Otherwise, I think everything was okay. 

My clients mainly use API Connect as an API gateway. A lot of the backend services need to be exposed to other parties, mobile devices, interfaces, etc. 

API Connect's most valuable feature is its ability to act as a gateway. It's very easy to configure security and everything else in it. You don't have to kill yourself implementing custom configurations. Sometimes the customer wants to incorporate their identity provider, and API Connect handles that without any problems. 

One thing about API Connect that could be improved is the security schemes. There are so many security schemes, and from a product perspective, IBM could improve the user experience of the configuration security scheme. It does what it is supposed to do, but it could be easier to configure. The junior developers sometimes find it a bit confusing to configure even though they understand the concept.

And another thing is that I don't know the security policies that we have. For instance, we have a service account, which is needed to connect to some other services. So in those cases, I find it a bit hard to tweak things in the API gateway. And one could argue that it is not the right thing to do with the API gateway. It has a different place to be, which could be why they haven't put it there. But sometimes, you have to tweak around that, and I find it a little bit hard to do that. So if they could accommodate that in there, it would be better for some people.

I've been using it for the last four years on and off. The last time I deployed it was a few months ago.

API Connect is reliable.

API Connect is scalable, but I've found that everything is more stable if you reset the server every 40 or 45 days. Once, we had an incident in which we were unsure about what happened, but it crashed after 60 days. We didn't know the reason. It could've been a mistake in the product implementation. We don't know what happened, but this particular incident occurred two times. After that, we began restarting it every 45 days. So that's the resilience part, but the scalability part works without a problem.
Another thing is that we don't know all of the use cases that we have worked on before, so we didn't go for automatic scaling of the API gateway. That's done in the backend services. So I'll be honest to say that we haven't explored the auto-scalability of API Connect much. Instead, we put that on full throttle. This can cause a bottleneck if we play around with it, so we didn't take many risks. We put that on full throttle and did the tweaking in the backend services. That's how we did it in the past.

I've interacted with IBM support many times. They're good. They get back to you within 12 or 14 hours after you initiate a ticket. IBM support will get on a call with you if needed and guide you. It's no problem. They provide the same level of support to everyone. 

Setting up API Connect is a straightforward process. Maybe it seems more manageable because I've been taking baby steps rolling it out for the last few years. So when we talk about the latest version, it's not a headache if you follow the documentation. Even for an operations person, it's a piece of cake. 

It takes a minimal amount of time to deploy as a product. Including the processes for the organization, installing the product could take half a day. And when we ask the Ops team to do it, it usually takes half a day for them to do it. They have to document the IP and keep a log of what they're doing. 

API Connect itself does not require any maintenance. But when our teams write the business logic into it, that usually requires some support and maintenance. So a team of two people looks after the whole setup. And they work in shifts. Usually, it works on an onshore-offshore model. So one person from the onshore team will be supporting it for some time, and when he goes off, the other person comes up. 

API Connect's license cost could be a little lower. But, unfortunately, there aren't many open-source API gateways. Ideally, some new developers could come up with a minimum-functionality open-source solution. When I look for open-source resources that work with API C or Apigee, I find very few that can do that. It's not available or very popular in the open-source community. I've only worked with large companies that are capable of affording these licenses.  A better option for smaller companies might be to have two or three developers build a custom API gateway. That might be more affordable for them.

I rate API Connect seven out of 10. I would recommend it to customers if they have the money to pay for it, but it depends on the ecosystem. So, as a consultant, I would recommend API Connect if the customer already has an IBM license. Big companies generally have IBM middleware running somewhere, so they might have a license for these things. In cases like this, we would usually recommend API Connect for their purposes rather than spending more money on a different product. And if a client is building something entirely new and has to get a new license, we'll compare the options, including Apigee, MuleSoft, API C, or a custom solution. 

We are using IBM API Connect to integrate bank applications. We are linking frontend services with the backend to prevent unwanted penetration.

I have found IBM API Connect to be highly secure, efficient, easy to deploy, and has a great GUI. It can operate and integrate well with other vendors, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

I have been using IBM API Connect for approximately two years.

The solution has a modern cloud and it has been stable and reliable. We have not had any breaches of security.

The solution is highly scalable, you can scale up and down. It has good performance, and you are able to customize the APIs to what you want.

The support we have received from IBM has been great, they have been very responsive.

I have previously used Oracle API gateway. When comparing the two, they are both very reliable and have good APIs but IBM on-premise installation is more flexible.

The installation was difficult with the IBM toolkit.

We have an architectural roadmap to follow while doing the implementation of the solution and it took approximately three months for our teams to complete. I had some support from IBM during the process.

The price of the solution is very expensive, it can turn many customers away.

The solution is very good and might not be suited for everyone's use case. Organizations might not need such a robust solution that is priced as high as it is. The demographics can play a role in if this solution is suitable, it depends on what others are using to make it competitive. For example, in Africa, the use of this solution is very low, they are not thinking too much about security. However, if your organization wants to take its operations to the next level then this solution might be the right choice.

I rate IBM API Connect an eight out of ten.