Layer7 API Management Reviews

I work as a PG developer, primarily dealing with Layer7 API Management and MuleSoft API management. My focus is mainly on VM management platforms such as Layer7 and Apigee.

Layer7 API Management is most valued for its drag-and-drop functionalities, the available policy options, and the excellent security features. I appreciate the ease of syncing the developer portal with Layer7 and the ability to publish DEP.

I use the solution since I work for many different kinds of domains and different kinds of organizations, including the banking and financial sectors.

The solution's most valuable feature stems from its providing a developer portal to its users. OTK configuration is available with Layer7 API Management, which helps deal with security. The main important aspect of the tool is related to the area called Layer7 API Gateway.

We had all those three layers from API: the gateway, mediation, and monitoring. We had implemented that on CentOS operating system. 

After that, we deployed some test APIs for patient-related activities in healthcare. We were querying the patient appointments from the patient database and then passing it on to a mobile app. That was the small experience I had. 

We had this API M dashboard on which and the APM gateway server on which we deployed all these APIs, a couple of APIs only, not much. I just initiated that project, implemented them, the UAT, and the protection domain, and then deployed a couple of sample APIs. After that, I left the role. I don't have any detailed experience, because we were not able to implement many APIs because the site was just starting up.

This product improved our time to market. Because we are a government healthcare organization, we are supposed to expose our patient data to the national command center and other mobile apps. We were able to expose our data securely. That was an advantage of Layer7 API.

I used the solution in my company since I was involved in the designing of the network and security. Right now, I am designing all the solutions in our company's environment.

My company faced a ransomware attack in 2022, after which we installed a honeypot to deal with DDoS attacks. Layer7 API Management was implemented to deal with ransomware attacks since they compromise our company's security.

Layer7 API Management protects your company's whole environment, especially if you operate at a global level or in an area where a lot of people are involved in accessing your applications. Layer7 API Management serves as the best solution in any environment because if you see a honeypot, it is used to create a dummy network in an environment, meaning it creates a puzzle kind of environment for attackers.

We have one Global customer using Layer7 API Management for their entire API management. They have exposed APIs to their external partners and vendors through a marketplace. However, Layer7 API Management is primarily used as a gateway solution, and its management capabilities are not as strong as those of other solutions available. As a result, the customer also uses Apigee for API management tasks. Apigee has been used throughout the customer's API program, including building the marketplace, monetizing APIs, and developing a developer portal.

In 2017, when we started working on Layer7, Apigee was the only competitor, which is still emerging as one of the great solutions for repair management. Layer7 was working out well for our needs. You can do many transformations. There's a lot of scripting admin layer gateway layer. It needs to be treated more as an anti-pattern because you don't do much scripting as the gateway layer. We use Layer7 extensively because of old legacy services and to recreate new modern services. Our customers are moving away from Layer7 because its management piece is not great. The monitoring and monetization parts are not coming out sooner. Other players like Mule or Apigee are coming up.

Layer 7 API management is my go-to solution for handling the entire API lifecycle. From governance and management to developer onboarding, monitoring, and analytics, it simplifies and secures the process.

I appreciate Layer 7 API management for its comprehensive approach to the entire API lifecycle, including governance, management, and analytics.

The solution secures your API/Service/Application in a matter of minutes. It also provides the capability for translating services from one format to another (SOAP to REST, REST to SOAP, GraphQL - API, and vice versa). Broadcom API Gateway would provide you 1000+ out-of-the-box assertions and certain custom assertions to meet your development and integration requirements. Rather than building an application in hours through coding the Drag and Drop capability, allows you to create APIs in minutes. The runtime setup allows coding and testing at a faster pace without the need to deploy and redeploy applications for every version build published. Failure if any the code could be rolled back in a matter of seconds and activated. So it provides a good framework that is tried and tested over the years and provided a Robust OOB Security and Implementation interfaces.

I have mainly implemented using Layer 7 API Management. Some of the major challenges we were able to meet with a quick release to market methodology.

Some of the tasks which we achieved for our customers were:

1. Translation service from SOAP to REST and vice versa.

2. API service to DB (Oracle, MySQL, MSSQL, Snowflake, SAP HANA) -- Created Swagger APIs that were able to perform CRUD operation to the backend API mentioned above and provided routes to query and get data.

3. Integration with Payment gateway service providers to perform (transaction on behalf of the customer with third-party payment gateway service providers white labeled with our APIs ) -- Followed TMF standards for payment gateway integration with the Telcom world.

4. Orchestration of the API. Build multiple microservers and provided orchestration based on route, path, and data in the request and perform actions that would be communicated with multiple APIs and provide a single consolidated response.

5. Provided API-driven security (Oauth 2.0, JWT, SAML, Basic, and a variety of means) to access the API giving the developer the freedom to concentrate only on application/service/microservice and let the gateway handle the threat.

6. Seamless Mutual Authentication allowed good segregation between APIs in the DMZ and internal network.