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Boomi AtomSphere API Management vs IBM DataPower Gateway comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Boomi AtomSphere API Manage...
Ranking in API Management
15th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM DataPower Gateway
Ranking in API Management
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (6th), Application Infrastructure (9th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Boomi AtomSphere API Management is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.8%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

Jason Hale - PeerSpot reviewer
Complex to manage, and the documentation is quite hard to learn, though APIs can be created quickly and easily
We faced issues with error management. When there was an issue with a job, it was quite difficult to find the reason for the error in the environment. There are multiple screens on the user interface. So we have to jump through different screens during the deployment of APIs constantly. It is quite easy to lose track of what we are doing. It was really easy to see processes running and what was happening in the environment. However, getting things from development to production was somewhat challenging. The documentation is quite hard to learn. I rate the documentation a three out of ten. The product is really complex to manage.
Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Security features meets compliance needs and offers MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) that simplifies integration efforts
While I like IBM products, I'm not an evangelist. I work with Java, Microsoft ASP.NET, and various technologies. I'm not tied to any specific vendor. However, I do find IBM to be a bit greedy. It's a large, profit-driven company. The support team is mostly based in India, and they follow a very structured process and protocol. Sometimes, it feels like playing ping pong with them – lots of back and forth before the problem gets escalated. You might even have to get your sales rep involved to push things along. For me, the support it could be better. Indian support teams aren't inherently bad, but with IBM, it feels impersonal. They respond, sure. But if it's a complex technical issue, they might ask you a lot of questions that just seem designed to waste your time. Sometimes it feels like they hope you'll get frustrated and solve the problem yourself.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The product's stability is good."
"We can create APIs straightforwardly and quickly and build jobs for data migration."
"AtomSphere is tightly integrated into the Boomi iPaaS platform. And Boomi has been augmenting AtomSphere API Management for the past couple of years so version 2.0 is better than 1.0."
"We can develop almost any interface that we need."
"The stability of the solution is good."
"Integrations take less time."
"Boomi AtomSphere API Management is a good product for integrating with Boomi as a backend service."
"AtomSphere API Management is a simple platform that's easy to use. If you're using it on-prem, there's a little learning curve."
"The solution is straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well."
"My company has a good impression of IBM DataPower Gateway. What I like about it is that because it's an appliance, it's a turnkey solution that's very fast and out of the box. Compared to other gateways, I also like that IBM DataPower Gateway is function-rich. For example, for one of the projects, there was a need for specific transformation and security features available in IBM DataPower Gateway out of the box, so my team just needed to configure the appliance. There was no need for separate development, and I found it quite neat. Another valuable feature of IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's easy to integrate with other products."
"It is easy to use, easy to install, and it's resilient for high availability."
"I like that it is very stable, and we never experience any downtime."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution is very easy to work with."
"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
 

Cons

"To some degree, you need to know what type or amount of API you are creating - whether it's a rest API or web service API. You need to know ETL in order to really get the most out of Boomi."
"It's difficult to integrate the on-prem application with the Dell Boomi Cloud. We have to check to ensure the Dell domain engine is running. It just requires some service endpoints from our on-prem application to connect to Dell Boomi Cloud to make it available to integrate. It would be better if AtomSphere API Management were offered as a purely SaaS application, so I wouldn't need an on-prem component to make it available. We could make a test call or provide some connection parameters. That should enable it to pull the data."
"The solution must provide more AI services."
"Boomi AtomSphere API Management can be improved in terms of threshold management and policy management."
"Most of the basic functionality is there in Boomi, but APG is a more feature-rich solution."
"From an improvement perspective, the price could be cheaper."
"The product is really complex to manage."
"The API management has room for improvement."
"Its support services could be better."
"I would like the tool to improve its training."
"One area that could be improved is the integration with Postgres and SQL databases. Currently, IBM DataPower Gateway only integrates with Oracle databases."
"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite big for smaller organizations, looking at different types of clients who are virtually assisted in this, I would say it's not really a good product for smaller firms."
"The programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script."
"Some pre-packaged connectors for integration with various applications, such as SaaS offerings, would be a useful addition."
"An area for improvement in IBM DataPower Gateway is its price point because it's a relatively expensive product. Sometimes, when the customer use case is just a very small subset of what's being offered in IBM DataPower Gateway, then the product can be expensive, making my company lose some of the opportunities because of the expensive pricing. A lower price point for IBM DataPower Gateway, even if that results in a less feature-rich version, would be appreciated. In terms of additional features that I'd like to see in the next release of IBM DataPower Gateway, nothing specific comes to mind because IBM constantly improves its standards and provides quarterly updates to the product, so it's quite fine."
"It is a costly product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable."
"The product can get very expensive quickly if you connect to multiple databases."
"Boomi AtomSphere API Management gives customers a good price. Price-wise, the product is good."
"Boomi AtomSphere API Management is a cheap product."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"IBM DataPower Gateway is quite expensive to get resources to work on this product. If the price could be cheaper, I think that will make it a little bit better and easily accessible to smaller clients. Then it could compete with other solutions that are available in the market. There's a whole lot of other solutions available that work well and are cheaper than IBM's products."
"As far as I know, they have a perpetual license for this product. They are paying perpetual fees rather than an annual subscription or annual pricing."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM DataPower Gateway?
The MPGW (Multi-Protocol Gateway) is great because it allows you to easily expose services using various protocols – web services, REST (JSON), and others. This flexibility simplifies things.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM DataPower Gateway?
I would rate the pricing a two out of ten, with one being high price, and ten being low price. It's high-priced for smaller companies. But it is okay for enterprises. So, the price could be more fl...
What needs improvement with IBM DataPower Gateway?
The price could be more flexible for different clients.
 

Also Known As

Boomi API Management
WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Avalara, Cornell University, Dropbox
RBL Bank, Availity
Find out what your peers are saying about Boomi AtomSphere API Management vs. IBM DataPower Gateway and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.