webMethods Integration Server Reviews

webMethods, in my current client's environment, is used to provide solutions based on SOA (web services) and BPM (Business Process Management).

The MFT component of webMethods, for example, is easy to set up and convenient to use. It handles files very efficiently and it is easy to automate tasks with complex schedules. Monitoring is centralized to MWS which can be used to monitor other products as well (Trading Networks, BPM, MFT, etc.)

• SOA
• BPM
• Trading Networks (B2B)
• Active transfer (MFT)

Documentation needs tuning. There is a lot of dependency with SoftwareAG. Even with the documentation at hand, you can struggle to implement scenarios without SAG’s help. By contrast, IBM’s documentation is self-explanatory, in my opinion.

Segregation of deployment for the environments is the most valuable feature of the solution.

The product must improve the performance of Designer. The product must add more compatible connectors. The solution should provide more customization options.

I have been using the solution for about ten years.

I rate the solution’s stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. Seven users are using the solution in our organization.

The technical support team is not so good.

Neutral

The initial setup is not difficult for me. I rate the ease of setup a seven or eight out of ten.

The deployment process took around two weeks. We need a team of seven people to deploy the solution.

I rate the pricing a nine out of ten. The product is expensive.

I am using the latest version of the solution. My advice to product users depends on their organization's scale. If an organization is a medium to large enterprise, I would recommend the solution to them. If the organization is small, it should consider other solutions in the market. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for logistic purposes.

The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to integrate with various servers.

The solution could be more user-friendly. They should include proper documentation for easy understanding.

We have ten solution users in our company. It has good scalability. We plan to increase its usage.

The solution's customer service is good. We have support access. Thus, we write to them for the service request in case of any issues.

The complexity of the solution's initial setup process depends on the environment and specific project requirements.

We purchase a yearly basis license for the solution. I rate its pricing an eight. It is not that expensive. The price depends on the use cases, support, and resources for implementation.

It is a good solution. Also, it is easy to use compared to other integration solutions like Azure, SAP, etc. It has the highest resolution and is more secure as well. I rate it a nine.

We have some common services, like REST-based services. We have applications, general social services, and application services. We'll use the solution as a utility to share across the applications selected.

When an organization is, for example, a bank, it can't use an open-source solution - even though open-source solutions are providing more current features. They need to go for a vendor-based solution like this product. 

It's a well-settled, mature platform.

The stability is good.

It can scale. 

We'd like for them to open up to a more cloud-based solution that could offer more flexibility and maybe a better rules engine or more integration with rules engines. The rules should also be more centralized. 

We'd like to see more documentation. We feel like we may be missing some things and would like some documentation to lay out the entire product better. We need better use cases. They don't offer many examples to showcase their product's capabilities. 

I've used the solution for more than a decade. It's been 12 to 14 years at this point. 

The solution is very stable. They have the flow language. We've been using it since version 6.0 and we haven't had any major issues. It's pretty seamless. 

For what we need, it scales quite well. We don't have to worry about having to scale too large as our organization, a bank, is not a very big bank. That said, scalability has never been a problem. 

It's a solution that is generally used by the IT department, not everyone in the company. Maybe between five and ten people use it in total. 

We have to use technical support sometimes. We do, for example, during migrations. We incorporated a business process from webMethods. We are now changing the process in terms of where we were using the database to control the business processes. It is more or less now using the RED METHODs PPM. When changes need to happen we contact them and work with them. 

While they do help, the documentation could be better. 

Positive

The initial setup is very simple and very straightforward. 

That said, open-source solutions are easier. However, we like to have a contractor come in and take care of everything.  

Everything to be set up must be done carefully and properly. Certain changes cannot be incorporated so easily. There might be certain dependencies across certain applications. We take a pretty careful approach every time we are migrating.

We had a third-party assist us with the implementation. It makes everything very easy.

I'm a user of the application. I don't directly handle the licensing. 

I'd warn potential users that, if you get into the ESB sort solution, once you get into it,  coming out of it is very difficult. The dependencies are very high and you are running it in the middle of your architecture. It becomes something you have to budget for and allocate every year. 

I'd rate the solution a seven out of ten due to the complicated installation process. 

The primary use of the webMethods platform is to communicate with multiple applications and integrate them. webMethods provides business process integration, B2B partner integration, and also uses Web services to connect software applications. My client acquired another company and we are integrating the partners of the acquired company with their clients, using various data communication standards like EDI, EDIFACT, and Rosettanet messages. 

In my previous project we used it to bridge communications between a front-end application and the back-end, connecting them with Web services through SOAP requests and SOAP responses, using JMS queues and broker.

When my organization wanted to migrate the front-end applications from a Genesys framework to .NET for various security reasons, webMethods was used for ESB integration. At the time of migration, there was no work being done on the ESB side, which reduced developers' efforts and all the services were re-used as we used Web services to connect the front-end with mainframes.

When my business client  acquired another business and we were integrating the services, as B2B uses standard communication messages, i.e. EDI, the work made the developers' task simpler, in handling all the interfaces.

All of the following three features provided by webMethods are valuable:

1. Application integration
2. Business process integration
3. B2B partner integration

But among these, I feel B2B partner integration is the most valuable. This module integrates two business partners and exchanges data through electronic data interchange messages in the form of specific standards, without any manual process needed.

When migration happens from the one release to an upgraded release from Software AG, many of the existing services are deprecated and developers have to put in effort testing and redeveloping some of the services. It would be better that upgrade releases took care to support the lower-level versions of webMethods.

On a scale of one to 10, I would rate this product an eight. I feel comfortable using this product with its ease of building interfaces for developers. This is a better integration tool for integrating with various applications like Oracle, Salesforce, mainframes, etc. It works fine in the integration of legacy software as well.

I have been using this solution for two years and four months and I haven't had any difficulty using it for building the interfaces and connecting various business processes, once I had acquired basic knowledge of the solution.

I am using webMethods Integration Server for integrating services mainly, enterprise services bus (ESB). It is a platform for the integration of different systems.

The solution can be used in many industries and different IT systems, such as internal and external databases. We have many dedicated auditors for common projects.

The most valuable feature of the webMethods Integration Server is its reliability. It has a lot of great documentation from the service providers. Additionally, it is easy to use.

This is a great solution and the vendor could improve the marketing of the solution to be able to reach more clients.

I have been using the webMethods Integration Server for approximately six years and I use it daily.

I use the latest version and sometimes older versions.

The solution can be deployed on the cloud or on-premise.

The stability of the webMethods Integration Server is good.

webMethods Integration Server is a scalable solution. There are Microsoft Windows and Linux versions available.

We have more than 10 customers using this solution.

I have used the support from webMethods Integration Server and they have been helpful. The support was able to find the solution to my problems with a fix.

The installation of the webMethods Integration Server is straightforward.

The length of time it takes for the implementation depends on the architecture and how many instances we need to install for the client. However, it typically takes a couple of days.

The implementation process starts with downloading a load that connects to the software. A server takes on the needed components, such as an integration server or universal messaging. You need to follow the integration steps.

We do the implementation of the solution.

There is a license needed to use the webMethods Integration Server.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate webMethods Integration Server an eight out of ten.

This product is used for application integration. I have implemented this solution for many clients across the world.

The most valuable feature is stability. 

We have been experiencing problems with using Terracotta for clustering, which is something that they should improve.

Technical support is an area where they can improve.

I have been working with this product for approximately 15 years. The organization that I am currently with has been using it for about five.

This is a stable product. The Universal Messaging component had some issues with stability, although they have now been fixed. Over that time, they disappointed the customers for about two years.

We had some issues with clustering as we were trying to scale. We are using Terracotta and it gave us some problems.

The technical support team pays attention to our issues but at the same time, they don't seem to have an in-depth technical background. 

We still using IBM MQ today, although these are legacy integrations.

I have just recently started learning about MuleSoft, personally. From my research, I find that MuleSoft is better in terms of their cloud strategy.

The initial setup is not complex. I would say that it is straightforward.

The vendor is flexible with respect to pricing.

I have found that the home-grown products from this vendor always do pretty well, but when they acquire new products from third-parties, there has been some disappointment.

Overall, this is a pretty good product. In fact, my only real complaint is about support.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The Software AG Designer has been great. It's very intuitive.

The development tools need to be improved. They aren't very effective for us to use as the requirement to use the Software AG Designer is quite big. Sometimes our developer doesn't have a really high-end spec laptop or desktop computer. They sometimes have trouble opening the Software AG Designer to develop something.

The Software AG Designer could be more memory-efficient or CPU-efficient so that we can use it with middle-spec hardware. That would be a great improvement for us in development.

For a new user, the initial setup is hard. 

The quality of the message queuing could be improved. In webMethods they have something called Universal Messaging. Future modules could be included in the Integration Server for different queuing. Currently, they have the basic queuing for messaging. Maybe in the future, they can have built-in different priority queuing to make it a lot faster.

I've been using the solution for about three months. It hasn't been that long just yet.

We are still in development and trial. We didn't reach the point of production where we could really gauge its reliability and therefore we didn't really know how stable it is. We're still in the early stages.

We used to use Red Hat, however, I was not fully in charge of that Red Hat project. I can't speak to any particulars. We didn't really switch. It was a requirement from the existing client to use webMethods as they already had webMethods since version 9.5 and wanted to continue with it.

The initial setup is hard for an early learner like me. It's quite difficult as we were presented with too many features and we didn't really know what was going to be installed.

For example, when we tried to install Integration servers, we had so many other features that needed to be installed, and we don't really know what that was about. By the time we try to install, we forgot to install some other items, such as JDBC for the database. At that point, we needed to install it again. Overall, it's kind of hard for us to use the initial setup.

I'm not really familiar with the commercial side. I don't really know about pricing as I'm only on the operations side.

I'm only a vendor for the customer that already has this operating.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.