Microsoft Azure API Management Reviews

We use the product for managing APIs - for internal as well as for external communication.

Furthermore we enable transparency, governance and re-use.  

- Being a PaaS component it helped reducing maintance efforts
- Homogenous solution for information exchange between internal and external stakeholders 

The most valuable feature would be the easy integration into the entire Microsoft environment, like Access Directory, the collaboration tooling, the development tooling, basically the integration into the Microsoft universe.

Multi-tenant functionalities is missing from the system, especially when it comes to purpose specific requirements such as CI, branding, language, content structure. If you're aware of the details of API Management provided by Azure, there are two areas. One is for developers, and the other is for consumers. In order to support the best, or all the different use cases we have, the multi-tenant support would be appreciated.

I've been using the product for about three years. 

The product is stable, it's good. It depends a little bit on the tier, on the different settings, and different customizations that are possible. But in general, it's a stable solution.

Technical support to a certain extent is good, it's available in the internet, if you wish. The moment you need to reach out for serious technical support in terms of incidents, or on-site support, or whatever, it becomes a little more challenging.

The initial setup for us was easy. It helps that we have Azure knowledge within the company.

Understand the different Tiers (from small to large including VNet-integrated express route)

Start small and be aware that the developer version has all features enabled which also requires the highest possible Tier.

Approach API Management in the two areas "tooling" and "governance".

Tooling required end-to-end thinking from a developer, consumer and infrastructure perspective. For each multiple examples can be shared.

For governance start with the obvious fitting to your organization. Do not follow all recommendations from the start, hence expect an iterative approach.

I would recommend this product and would rate it an eight out of 10. 

Our primary use case is for managing internal APIs, for ordering process APIs and in general process APIs, and resource manipulation APIs. We need an API management to get a better overview, and this is one use case with analytics parts. Another use case is security, being able to rotate API keys and to manage access at a signature point. Finally, we also have the developer portals with the self-service capabilities so that developers can request access to APIs through a developer portal and manage their own keys.

We are still in the ramp-up phase, so currently we have actively two or three guys using it. We're planning to increase usage. We're in partnership with Microsoft and I'm an enterprise architect. 

It's not the best product on the market which makes it difficult to pick a particular point that we like the best. It could be the integration in the Azure portal. In the Azure cloud it's directly connected with Azure ID, so if you stay in the Azure ecosystem, this user concept is an advantage. The solution also allows you the possibility to use VPN technology and things like that to connect your gateway directly with on-prem services and that's a valuable feature. And compared to other solutions the price is outstanding. 

R&P, the publishing process could be improved. They are currently restructuring it, I believe.
I'm not technical but we noticed that the old developer portal got deprecated and they're introducing a new one. It's not polished and still requires some development. It's the same with the publisher portal which I believe they've now integrated into the Azure portal. They're just starting to work with hybrids so it still requires input. 

It would be helpful if they were to include additional features and clearer configuration when it comes to API policies.

I've been using this solution for seven months. 

The SaaS offering is stable but the hybrid isn't stable yet. It's under development.  

By definition it's scalable, but I know there's a hard limit in requests per second. But this is officially documented in the price of the product so it is scalable but with limits. I believe for a scalable solution, probably KANN Enterprise would be best.

For beta, customer service was kind of difficult. But I think that we haven't gone further than the first level. It's a process, they first have to narrow down your requirements, it's not direct access to support with direct feedback. It will take time. 

This is the first solution we evaluated and we chose it mainly in order to gain experience which is why we called it an experience project rather than a proof of concept project. We figured out that for our productive usage, we will select a different vendor.

I believe the initial set up is straightforward via the Azure portal. But setting up the policies for the APIs and all of that, I can't say. I've had feedback from a colleague working with it that at some point he wished things would be easier but I don't have first hand experience. 

As mentioned, this is the only option we looked at. We chose Azure because it's easy to deploy and it's cheap. It's a good starting point and if they develop it further, it might be good for productive usage, especially if you are planning to use it as an API management platform for the services that are running in Azure. I think then there's no question.

I would rate this product a six out of 10.  

This solution is very flexible, and it's very compatible with the other Azure products.

The developer portal can be improved. There should be more resources available for the developers.

Better integration with third-party products would helpful.

I have been using Microsoft Azure API Management for two years.

This is a stable product and we intend to continue using it in the future.

We have more than ten users and there are five developers.

The support for Azure is excellent and we are satisfied with it.

The initial setup is very simple. It doesn't take longer than one or two hours to deploy.

A consultant assisted us with the deployment.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is to provide API mapping for our clients. We're a customer of Azure and I'm a system analyst. 

The most valuable feature of the solution is it's simplicity. It's easy to set up and is very well integrated with the Azure environment.

In terms of improvement, it would be helpful if they could develop an on-premises option. 

I've been using this solution for one year. 

I would rate this product a seven out of 10.