webMethods.io Reviews

In my company, the solution is used for SAP Integration.

The connectivity that the tool provides, along with the functionalities needed for our company's business, are some of the beneficial aspects of the product.

The feature I found to be most beneficial or valuable for our company's workflows revolves around the area of the broker functionality provided by the product since it has reduced a lot of effort.

The main reason my company decided to replace webMethods.io Integration is because of the integration capabilities in the newer versions of the tool. Whenever there is a new version of webMethods.io Integrations, there is a lot of work to be done by our company since the newer versions don't offer seamless integration. The aforementioned reason can be considered for improvement in webMethods.io Integrations.

With the solution, our company has experienced sudden outages at times. The product's stability is an area of concern where improvements are required.

Not just the cost related to licensing but also the cost of introducing new versions need improvement in the product. When you have an OS like Windows or Apple, in which some new features are installed when you restart your system, after which everything works fine, with webMethods.io Integration, the new features introduced in the tool don't just need you to stop and restart your application but expects you to update the whole application to be able to use the new functionalities, which is something that is good. My company does a business in which we have to create a complete project which costs a lot of money. In the future, I expect to not be paying a lot of money or extra work to be able to update the product, and webMethods.io Integration needs to update the product automatically.

I have been using webMethods.io Integration for three years.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

It is not a very scalable solution.

As webMethods.io Integration is a middleware product, it is difficult to provide a number of the solution's users.

I work with many products other than webMethods.io Integration. It was not my decision to use webMethods.io Integration in our company.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward, but it was a huge process.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

A technical team of eight members, including developers and administrators, is required to take care of the deployment and maintenance of the product.

The product's deployment process was carried out with the help of my company, DXC Technology.

The scenario where webMethods.io Integration is used to facilitate business process automation includes areas where data needs to be automated and integrated from SAP to third-party systems.

The solution helps me in my company with the integration area for some of the systems or applications, but we plan to replace it with another system.

I don't use the API management capability of the product to enhance your integration strategy.

I recommend the solution to those who plan to use the solution.

For my company's business operations, we use the tool's on-premises integration capabilities only.

I have noticed that the product works as expected, considering the fact that I have seen some improvements in areas like data management and quality since the implementation of the solution in our company.

Not just the cost related to licensing but also the cost of introducing new versions need improvement in the product. When you have an OS like Windows or Apple, in which some new features are installed when you restart your system, after which everything works fine, with webMethods.io Integration, the new features introduced in the tool don't just need you to stop and restart your application but expects you to update the whole application to be able to use the new functionalities, which is something that is good. My company does a business in which we have to create a complete project which costs a lot of money. In the future, I expect to not be paying a lot of money to be able to update the product, and webMethods.io Integration needs to update the product automatically.

I rate the overall product a six out of ten.

I have used webMethods Integration Server in a variety of roles over the past eight years, starting as a developer and progressing to integration specialist where my work entailed building enterprise solutions to process a lot of data (millions of records each day) using event-driven architecture.

Our primary use case is retail integration where there are a lot of orders being placed daily, and where all the inventory needs to be updated in the centralized system. It's mainly in the retail and banking sectors, or anywhere transactions may play a crucial role, where I have used webMethods the most in my projects.

Typically, it is used where data has to be going to multiple systems on-the-fly, such that there will be minimal latency. For example, in an event-driven process where there is an action trigger for a piece of data or record to be forwarded to multiple systems when that action has been triggered.

The latest versions I have worked with include 10.5 and 10.3, however at the moment and for the past year I have been working with MuleSoft more than webMethods.

Our infrastructure is mainly on-premises, but we are starting to move to the cloud. Our target is to move everything to cloud, and right now we have a few instances on-premises and a few in the cloud, hosted privately with Microsoft Azure.

As for users, we are not directly exposed to the clients or end-users. Instead, we are mainly part of the middleware layer, whereas many of our customer-facing portals are different and distinct from one another. If we counted from one portal, the users may go into the thousands or even billions sometimes. It depends on the transaction type that is involved. For example, if you take any store of the multiple stores in operation, we will get a daily number of orders and that number of transactions will go through our system. Ultimately, it differs from region to region and client to client, but the numbers on any store can be from thousands to 10,000 or more.

One valuable feature is that it is event-driven, so when new data is available on the source it can be quickly processed and displayed. Integration is definitely another useful feature, and B2B is one area where webMethods has its own unique thing going, whereby we can do monitoring of transactions, monitoring of client onboarding, and so on.

There are many valuable things from an EDA perspective, and webMethods helpfully supports a lot of formats. Considering their market strategies, I think webMethods has it all. And now there is webMethods.io, which is a complete cloud-based solution provider. Unfortunately, they are mainly known in the market for their broker transactions, and this is a perception I believe needs to be overcome.

Lastly, although I'm not too sure about the latest features, I believe they also have a service designer now, where you can work out the particular package that you want. 

The certifications and learning resources are not exposed openly enough. For instance, they have a trial version which comes with only a few basic features, and I think that community-wise they need to offer more free or open spaces where developers can feel encouraged to experiment. Perhaps they can work on maintaining more of a community in order to build up a better knowledge base, which is exposed on the free plans and not tagged to a particular paid version.

Otherwise, I think they have already built all the solutions as an individual component, so what they have currently should be fine. Based on the market, the new features should come up as usual, and I hope to see a lot of connectors become available with regard to NoSQL databases, Salesforce, CRM systems, and so on. And with these, I mean plug-and-play types of connectors, where we can easily experiment and see which products work well in the integration scheme, and which will help us decide whether to go with webMethods or not.

I've been using webMethods Integration Server for over eight years.

Compared to on-premises, the cloud solution is not as stable. These days I see a lot of network issues and cloud servers going down, becoming unreachable for whatever reason.

The cloud plays a major role in its scalability. When it comes to on-premise, it's not that scalable, as you will need to have a server and a standard process around that which will reduce the delay. In general, it's not that easy to get a system scalable when it is on-premise, especially when compared with the cloud as it's much easier to scale a system horizontally or vertically with any number of resources.

Their support is always good. We used to have regular meetings with the vendor where they explained things and gave details about new features and products that are going to be launched down the line. And if there are any product bugs, we align with their support to get things sorted out. We have a good relationship and approach with the vendor, who adheres to their SLAs.

The initial setup was more of an administrator task, so I did not participate in it directly. However, as far as I know, the software that comes with the installer is a complete package so we just needed to install it. It does require a bit of information which needs to be addressed prior to getting installed, though.

When it comes to code deployment, the code and packages that we work on go through the servers with CI/CD pipelines.

We do our implementations in-house only, with the help of automation. The number of engineers needed depends on the requirements for each project. At this moment, there is one person who takes care of the automation and troubleshooting of issues because it's all centralized and we don't have a dedicated team to do the deployments.

As we are all into different sectors, we typically release with all the teams together, and the release window doesn't account only for the team or the tools we're using, but it is also dependent on the complete functionality desired. So when there is a deployment planned with other teams, everyone has to release their code and do a round of testing, and then validate if everything works properly. It has multiple verifications and if something goes down then we have to report it. As such, I don't give timelines because it depends on the release, but typically webMethods' package deployment doesn't take that much time unless there are network issues.

I am not involved in the licensing side of things.

Whether you decide to use webMethods largely depends on the architectural landscape that the customer is looking at, and in particular what kind of flow data they want to process. It's always a matter of first getting the customer requirements, and then going with the tool that is easiest to implement and use.

Overall, I would rate webMethods Integration Server a seven out of ten.

We use ActiveTransfer to call internal APIs and transfer files from a third party to the cloud for application purposes and from a third party to on-prem. We also send files to the third party sometimes. We have a payments system and transfer files across the system to make customer domains.

We have on-prem, cloud, and hybrid deployments and transfer files across all of them. We're working with webMethods cloud, AWS, and Azure. Our eight-member team is using webMethods MFT and other integrations, and we have a shared team to work on multi-technologies, like web issues, Snowflake, webMethods MFTs, etc. 

ActiveTransfer lets us maintain the file in the staging area before we transfer it. After that, we can remove the file to make sure that the reconciliation process is done. Sometimes we will zip and unzip the files, but if we have a GKB file, we often ignore it. 

Some things could be improved, especially how ActiveTransfer handles third-party file transfers. It would be nice to have a native file-watching mechanism for when you're scheduling jobs with a third-party scheduler. 

Currently, we are using an outside file watcher solution to check the files before the file transfer. It checks the location to see if the file is there. If the file is there, it will prepare it for transfer. If the file isn't available, it will send an email it can create a ticket send it now. We recommended adding this file watcher mechanism. 

Also, when we're dealing with massive files, ActiveTransfer requires huge amounts of RAM, but if would be helpful if we could customize the compression and encryption to squeeze that data and reduce the size to save on system resources.

We have been using ActiveTransfer for six or seven years.

ActiveTransfer is stable.

ActiveTransfer is easy to scale and use also, which is why we recommend it. We have a script-based file transfer, but we use it less compared to MFT.

webMethods' technical support is excellent. When we have issues with third parties, networks, corrupted files, etc. we send the logs and they take care of it.

The difference between webMethods and Control-M is that Control-M schedules automation tools and checks to see if the file is there. Our team is currently using Control-M. 

If you use MFT and you've cleared the MFT events, it has to schedule through Control-M because all the jobs running through the solution end to end. Control-M has an AMF advance remain file transfer, where you can create a source and target profile.

Setting up ActiveTransfer is straightforward. I rate it eight out of 10 for ease of setup. As for maintenance, we have a monitoring mechanism in place and an automated process for large-scale transfer. If the current available space at the target is less than 30 percent, we have an alert.

We do it all in-house based on the customer's request. We'll keep all the files in the staging for one week. If necessary, we will remove it or move it to some other location. This kind of housekeeping and maintenance we do.

I'm not aware of the exact cost. That product team at my company is responsible when we need any maintenance, new products, upgrades, etc. 

I rate webMethods ActiveTransfer eight out of 10. They only need to improve a few minor things to bring it to the current market standard. My recommendation to webMethods is to add more flexibility to the file-watching mechanism to reduce the load on the RAM and CPU to a minimum, which will help when we are dealing with large numbers of massive files, especially in the retail environment.

We used to deal with millions of small files. When you are dealing with these kinds of files, you need to ensure that there is an internal reconciliation process. When you're reading and transferring thousands of files, you use a parallel instead of sequential mechanism to ensure all the files reach a target and that the reconciliation process is done automatically.

We use it to manage and secure APIs. It is particularly useful when dealing with a large number of APIs from various systems like banking, government validation, and more. It makes sure data is accurate and protected and helps systems work well together.

What I like the most about the solution is that it comes with ready-made tools like handling security tokens and OAuth. API Gateway does the hard work of keeping things secure and managing who can access what, making it easy and safe without lots of custom work.

One area for improvement in webMethods API Gateway is orchestration. Currently, API Gateway lacks built-in orchestration capabilities, so organizations may need to rely on other applications for this purpose. For example, if you are calling two services and one of them fails, you may need another application to handle the rollback or recovery process. Improving orchestration within API Gateway could simplify complex service interactions.

I have been using webMethods API Gateway for almost two years.

The technical support is a bit slow. It took them more than two weeks for a single ticket. I would rate it a seven out of ten.

Neutral

Setting up webMethods API Gateway can be easy or complex. It depends on what your company needs.

It is an expensive solution and not very suitable for smaller businesses.

My advice to people who are considering using the solution is to keep in mind that if you have a background in software development, especially with Java, you will likely find it easier to work with the platform. Overall, I would rate webMethods API Gateway an eight out of ten.

The solution offers a services catalogue that extends beyond monetization, acting as a source for API for external users and entities and monetization.

webMethods API Portal is overall very valuable. It is now a comprehensive API catalogue that serves various purposes, including API assessment and evaluation. The monetization module is particularly robust. It is applied across different sectors, including the government, and is known for its strong performance.     

The improvement needed is related to the model's position. As of now, it seems to be more of a conceptual idea rather than a widely implemented solution. Monetization is currently on the rise, driven by the growing demand for APIs. With everything being provided as APIs nowadays, it's crucial to grasp this concept and establish a robust solution for subscription plans and the price model.

I have been using the webMethods API Portal for the last seven years.

Since webMethods API Portal is regularly used by big enterprises, the performance needs to be the best. There can be no issues whatsoever, so it is stable. 

webMethods API Portal offers extensive scalability. Its primary focus is on catering to enterprises dealing with vast amounts of data or APIs. This solution appears to have certain minimum requirements that enterprises must fulfill to access it or make requests. It seems to be a compatible solution designed specifically for large enterprises managing huge data volumes. I would rate it seven out of ten. 

The support is available 24/7 and they are extremely experienced.

Positive

For APIs and gateways, I have experience with various platforms such as IBM MessageHQ, Microsoft Remote, and an Apache tool. In the case of IBM, there was a registry and certain tools that stood out, particularly the initial versions of the API gateway. These early versions were rather basic and targeted more toward experts or developers familiar with the system. While not the most user-friendly at the time, I believe IBM has likely evolved its offerings to include more advanced and user-friendly solutions. However, I acknowledge that my feedback might be somewhat outdated.

The initial setup is straightforward, but it requires extensive knowledge about the product.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

I don’t have much idea about prices, but webMethods API Portal is not cheap. 

The suitability of the webMethods API Portal depends on the organization's size. It's not appropriate for small or medium enterprises; rather, it's intended for larger enterprises. This is particularly in cases like ours, where it's utilized for managing big data APIs. As an example, we employ it to oversee the government's resources and permissions on a daily basis. This illustrates the significant volumes of data and APIs we handle regularly.

Today, we work with many financial organizations worldwide, and sometimes they have Legacy software, so we use webMethods Integration Server in those cases. 

We are not resellers, but we provide solutions to large financial institutions, and sometimes we have to work with a lot of legacy software. Sometimes we have webMethods Integration Server as part of the stack. Sometimes we do consulting, and sometimes we take ownership of parts of the projects that large financial institutions have.

webMethods Integration Server is very similar to every integration product in the world, and in the past, we used to write point-to-point connectors with the concept of ESB. We used hub and spoke architectures, and webMethods Integration Server would be used in that context.

Usually, the way large enterprises work is they acquire different licenses over time, so we check their internal IT asset management software in terms of their licenses. If they already have a webMethods Integration Server license, we use that as part of our solution.

Otherwise, we would make recommendations to them on what to acquire in the open market. If the solution is cloud-based, we recommend that they use cloud-based ESB software to integrate different components of their solution. We choose different software pieces, put them together, and ensure that they add value on top of the integration headaches that come when you work with enterprise software.

webMethods Integration Server benefited our organization. If it didn't, then we would not be using it.

What I like best about webMethods Integration Server is its portfolio of connectors. Every integration product has different components to interact with SAP, Salesforce CRM, etc. My organization includes the type of connectors a product has, apart from license availability, usage, and so on, as the criteria for choosing or recommending a solution.

In terms of the feature set, any integration software you use will have to connect different components of enterprise software. Depending on the enterprise software a financial institution, such as a bank, will be using, my company first checks the available connectors in the product, product maturity, and what other solutions can be integrated with the product before making a recommendation to either reuse the product if you currently have a license for it, or purchase a license if you don't have the license yet.

For example, when an enterprise invests in SAP or Salesforce CRM software, that investment is very significant. When you need a form of interaction to exchange data, that's when you use an integration product, so I'm saying that the actual value of integration software, such as webMethods Integration Server, is its ability to connect with other enterprise software.

webMethods Integration Server is no longer that popular because the market has started moving towards cloud-based ESB solutions from Azure, AWS, and other vendors, so this is one area for improvement.

As I mentioned, the real value for any enterprise integration software, especially a proprietary platform such as webMethods Integration Server, will be in the number, quality, and stability of the connectors it has. That is the most critical aspect of every ESB product in the world. Sometimes, what happens is in case a particular connector is not available between a proprietary component within a bank or a financial institution. My organization would have to develop the software components, so what would be ideal is if there was a core set of software that's open source, which would make it easy for third-party vendors and individuals to build components to fill in the gap. This is what I would recommend.

The market webMethods Integration Server falls under is a very crowded market, so for the product to stand out, Software AG would need to get traction in the open source community by releasing a new version or a base version and open source it, so people can create new custom components and add it to the portfolio.

I would recommend looking at Apache ServiceMix or Apache Camel, ESB products, or enterprise software products for integration and looking into the open-source mechanism. MuleSoft is another example, as it has an open-source base version and an enterprise version sold to enterprises. Mulesoft has many open-source components but allows third-party vendors and ISPs to create custom components for customers.

This is the feature set I would suggest for webMethods Integration Server because it's what the product needs to survive in the integration space. Otherwise, other solutions, such as Apache Camel, will take over the world.

I've used the webMethods Integration Server on and off for a long time. The product has been around for quite a bit. I evaluated it once my friend sent me a copy of it a long time back and made me a beta tester for the product. I've used it on and off.

webMethods Integration Server has been around for quite some time, so it's a very stable solution. It's much more stable compared to newer entrants in the market.

For software to be stable, it has to be deployed. It has to be created, developed, tested, and deployed in production. Then, it'll be patched and versioned across multiple years, so the more versions a solution has, the more bugs have been removed in the core system, making it much more stable than newer competitors. Again, this is a case-to-case basis, but you can generally use this as a rule of thumb. The longer the software has been there, the more stable it is.

This is why the backend payment systems are written in COBOL in almost every top financial organization or bank you walk into. Even though COBOL is practically a dead language, it's very stable because it's been in production, and it's been tested, verified, and used; plus, its bugs have been fixed over a long period, so you have very, very stable systems that run on COBOL.

Different people view scalability differently, but with webMethods Integration Server, what's happening is that you have cloud-based tools that make the solution far more scalable.

From a webMethods Integration Server point of view, as long as there's a load balancer in front with clustered mechanism, then it should be good to go. Still, the real key is how much of the transformation occurs in integration scenarios, the volume of transactions, the number of transformations, and content-based routing, which affect performance and scalability.

A good example is when you must put a highway to handle the traffic load it is typically expected to serve. You don't need to make it very, very scalable. If you're integrating the product with internal components in SAP or the Salesforce CRM system, you find out how much traffic typically happens, and you double it. Then you create an integration solution, which you benchmark to see whether it can handle that particular load. If it's going to be a cloud-based solution, you again do something similar, but at a much grander scale. That's when you put a load balancer in front and do all your scalability tricks.

One of the senior persons in Software AG is an old colleague of mine, a junior, so whenever I need webMethods Integration Server support, he'll pass me the name of the chief programmer over there, and I'll talk with him on the phone. In general, the software is good. The service quality is also good, and I don't remember any significant instance or problem I faced regarding support.

The complexity of setting up webMethods Integration Server, or any other enterprise integration solution, lies in the data you connect between two enterprise applications.

For example, you have to ask if you have to link ten SAP modules to two Salesforce CRM modules because that's where the complexity comes in. It's not the fault of the webMethods Integration Server if the initial setup is easy or difficult.

The business context would make the setup more complex, and an ESB tool, such as webMethods Integration Server, is just one piece of that puzzle.

Comparing webMethods Integration Server pricing with other solutions depends on the context. The cheapest will always be open-source ESB solutions, such as Apache ServiceMix and Apache Camel. Still, when you compare the quality of support of enterprise software, such as webMethods Integration Server, with open source software, enterprise software usually provides better support quality and higher level solutions versus open source software that typically doesn't have a real support model.

If you're lucky, you'll get someone who will immediately give you support for your open-source solution, but if not, you'll wait for months without any real support. webMethods Integration Server, on the other hand, as it's under Software AG and has an enterprise behind it, can create one-tier, two-tier, and three-tier support mechanisms, apart from providing you with timely support. Hence, you can use the product as part of an ongoing, much bigger integration project. That's where the differentiation and the value come in.

From an enterprise context, the price of webMethods Integration Server isn't that high because Software AG enters a relationship with companies and provides webMethods Integration Server as part of a much larger solution.

I've been in the IT industry for about thirty-two years now. In 1999 or 2000, a Dutch colleague and I created the entire concept of ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), so I have a long history in this particular space, and I've used all ESB products in the past. Right now, I'm the principal architect of a company that provides multiple solutions to financial institutions worldwide. I use ESBs, such as webMethods Integration Server, as part of the solution whenever there's a need.

webMethods Integration Server can be deployed either on-premises or on the cloud. The cloud is a big misnomer, as it's just a server elsewhere. As long as it's connected over a PCP software network, you can take advantage of it.

I'd tell anyone looking into using webMethods Integration Server to talk to the people in Software AG as the vendor has a portfolio of products. webMethods Integration Server is just one offering, so if you can get good value across a portfolio, go for it. However, you need to do the due diligence and create a pro and a con list for different software solutions available in the market. If you're rejecting open-source solutions, you need to have clear business reasons why. For example, maybe you need immediate support, your timeline is short, or your integration project requires a quick turnaround time. My organization is located in Germany, so it's much easier for it and the customers to work with Software AG and webMethods Integration Server, for example.

webMethods Integration Server is as good and bad as other enterprise products I previously worked with in Europe. No significant problems stood out, so my rating for the solution is seven out of ten.

We had multiple integrations in our internal applications. The webMethods Integration Server is integrated internally, plus we have integrated it with external entities depending upon SOAP, and REST. Additionally, there is some legacy system we have connectivity with.

The most valuable feature of the webMethods Integration Server is the built-in monitoring, auditing, RETS, and SOAP services.

I have been using webMethods Integration Server for approximately two years.

webMethods Integration Server is stable.

The scalability of the webMethods Integration Server is good. You can scale out by purchasing extra licenses in the new nodes.

We provide a public service, we have more than 1,000 users using this solution.

The support is good but they could improve by being faster and more knowledgeable. I only have one incident in which I needed support. However, I fixed it myself because it was taking too much time for the agent to understand my issue. The agent was not able to handle the issue. During the communication, I found out about the issue, and I fixed it myself.

I rate the support of webMethods Integration Server a four out of ten.

We were using MuleSoft previously. We move to webMethods Integration Server because there was no local presence for MuleSoft.

The initial setup of the webMethods Integration Server is not easy but it gets easier once you know it. It is tiresome but not difficult.

We deployed webMethods Integration Server for our development and staging, and then we moved on to production. Regarding development and staging, there are single servers for production and we have multiple nodes for each.

We did the deployment of the webMethods Integration Server in-house. We have a team of eight that does the deployment and support of the solution. One is an administrator for the management and the others are developers.

webMethods Integration Server has a very good API gateway. It will help your development become easier, because most of the services, we do not have to make any extra changes. We can do it by the gateway. I recommend that the portal which is on the front-end be the gateway, and on the back-end is the integration service.

I rate webMethods Integration Server an eight out of ten.

This solution is primarily used for protecting our APIs and web services. All of our APIs are exposed to the outside world, so our internal network is protected by the API gateway. Our landscape inside the company is also divided into different domains and if you go from one domain to another domain, we also want the APIs to be protected.

We have two servers with an API gateway and a load balancer in front of it.

We also use this solution for monitoring, to know how many transactions we have had and who is using our API. These are the runtime capabilities.

Another thing we use this product for is governance, to govern the lifecycle of our API services. It will tell us the state of the service, who is responsible for it, and what deliverables belong to that stage, and we also have some quality checkpoints inside the lifecycle.

With respect to the end-to-end lifecycle management of APIs, this product is very good, feature-wise. We have the ability to govern the end-to-end lifecycle; in the different states, we can do the necessary customization and add our own flavor. This helps us maintain it very well.

The API governance capabilities for enforcing standards and security policies are quite good. However, it is a new product that started a few years ago, and you can sometimes tell that it is new and still evolving. For example, there are some bugs and problems that are still being fixed as it is further developed. They are evolving the features and we are happy with the product, but there can be more issues that arise as things change.

These quality checkpoints allow us to have a central team that reviews the deliverables of the service. In the Design phase, for instance, we will review the REST API interface to see if it matches our standards.

This solution has enabled us to create new channels for growth because we can quickly introduce new APIs. Sometimes, you need to quickly set up a marketing campaign with an application that needs to happen fast. The API gateway allows us to introduce APIs that are still good and protected but in a fast way.

We have a good overview of all of our APIs, including who is providing them and who consuming them, which allows us to better work together to resolve issues before they emerge. For example, if there are changes made, we have a better view of the impact and the team can start discussing it. Also, if we are deprecating services and removing them, we know who is using these APIs and they can be contacted in advance.

Another important point is that when a new application wants to use an API, it can provide the necessary information such as the number of transactions. With this knowledge, the provider can adapt accordingly and it will be possible to add it.

Using the product has provided us with a structured API management program. Because we have governance and knowledge about all of the APIs, we have a better overview. Knowing who is using an API, or who is going to use it, means that it is easier to introduce new things.

This solution has given us a competitive advantage because we have better automation and insight. Without it, a lot of automation would not be possible, and doing it manually would take more time.

More generally, this API gateway has improved the way our organization functions because it allows us to enable more partner integrations. Until now, most of our business-to-business integrations were going over EDI. With API instead, it will allow us to onboard other partners. The reason for this is that EDI is a very heavy format, which is very expensive. As a retail company, EDI is affordable when you have a large vendor. But sometimes we have smaller vendors, and if we force them to use EDI, it will sometimes block the ability to sell products to us because they can't afford the complete functionality of sending invoices or receiving orders.

What we are now doing with API management is to make the order and invoicing systems available via API. These smaller vendors can then use these APIs to send an invoice or to receive an order.

The two most important features are the lifecycle and the protection of your APIs.

On the topic of protecting your APIs, every API management solution has that, which is the core business. Without it, you don't have an API gateway and it's the basic setup that every API management solution needs. Of course, protecting your APIs is very important.

With respect to the lifecycle, it is helpful because, in our business, we find it important to have an overview of all of our APIs and to guide our different roles, including architects and solution developers, in the necessary work for delivering a web service. Depending on the type of service, we also want to govern the quality. We don't do it for all APIs but for some categories, we find it very important that the quality is at a high level. This means that we want to govern that and review it.

In these aspects, this solution helps us.

In relation to the lifecycle features, the user interface and the performance can be improved. It is not the quickest application and the user interface is not the most up-to-date. It's a tool that has existed for quite some time, and there haven't been a lot of improvements.

With respect to the API gateway, the runtime component, and the stability after a new release is something that can be improved.

I have been working with the webMethods API Gateway for approximately five years.

Once the system is set up and configured properly, it's stable. We don't have outages and it runs very well.

There are two ways to scale this product, and both of them are easy to do. The first is to add another server to your cluster, and the second way is to add more CPU power.

I would rate the technical support medium-high. It is comparable with other companies; not worse, but not especially better.

In general, I am happy with the support but my complaints are about the timing. Specifically, if your issue can be handled by the first line then you get feedback quickly. However, if the issue is complex then it needs to go to R&D and it takes time. This is the same experience that I have with other companies.

Positive

We did not use another similar solution prior to this one.

The installation and initial setup are complex. It is not possible to just keep clicking the Next button during the setup. You need to configure the system such that it works best for your environment. You should plan for deployment over three to six months, at least.

My advice is to involve a consultant from Software AG to help you with the setup. Of course, this is an on-premises situation. In the cloud, I don't know how easy or difficult it is.

We have seen ROI from this product and we are able to determine this because of our internal accounting. When a project starts, we always calculate what our benefits are with respect to the technology. Taking into account the number of web services and APIs that we have, we're pretty sure that considering the cost of governance, this solution is better than if we were not using one.

This is not a cheap solution but, compared to other products such as those offered by IBM, the pricing is similar.

We did evaluate other options including IBM API Connect and Apigee. Feature-wise, these products are comparable.

Given that we were already using webMethods, using the API gateway had some benefits. There is value in staying with a single vendor, with the advantage that it is easier to integrate with other products in the webMethods stack.

We did not consider using any open-source alternatives.

This solution provides a fully customizable portal that has built-in testing capabilities, although we haven't implemented it yet. This is something that we are planning to do within the next couple of months.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to involve consultants who are familiar with it because they can help you to best set it up. Also, think about the process and steps in your governance because this is a workflow and you want to be sure that it follows the procedures that you have in place.

Overall, I'm happy with the product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.