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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
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (4th), Application Infrastructure (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of Boomi AtomSphere API Management is 0.4%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.8%, up from 3.7% 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

"Boomi AtomSphere API Management is a good product for integrating with Boomi as a backend service."
"The product's stability is good."
"We can develop almost any interface that we need."
"Integrations take less time."
"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 stability of the solution 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."
"Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features."
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"The scalability of the solution is good."
"The product's most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."
"I like the tool's security. Also, all functionalities are integrated within on platform."
"You don't have to have a separate DMC proxy because DataPower Gateway is an appliance and will take care of a lot of security features. These include data validations, encryption, as well as XML or any type of scripting or security threats that are present."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
 

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."
"The API management has room for improvement."
"The solution must provide more AI services."
"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."
"Most of the basic functionality is there in Boomi, but APG is a more feature-rich solution."
"Boomi AtomSphere API Management can be improved in terms of threshold management and policy management."
"The product is really complex to manage."
"From an improvement perspective, the price could be cheaper."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"DataPower isn't the most user-friendly tool. It is not an easy tool to use. Some things could use better wizards to guide you through processes."
"The DCDR process should be less complex."
"The product should be more adapted to the DevOps process."
"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."
"The product's cost for data appliances or hardware is quite high. It needs improvement."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"Small and medium-sized companies might look for cloud-hosted applications due to the cost."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Boomi AtomSphere API Management is a cheap product."
"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."
"The price is reasonable."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"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 licensing cost is very expensive."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"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."
"This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment."
"The total cost of IBM DataPower Gateway would depend on the configuration, but in my experience, it can amount to 60,000 Euros per box, even for the virtual version. Usually, customers need high availability and a non-production environment, so the total price for IBM DataPower Gateway can be quite a lot. It can be 200,000 Euros or a similar figure."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
10%
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 DCDR process should be less complex. AI should improve developer efficiency and effort. Whenever I am writing code, it should give recommendations automatically by incorporating AI so I can wri...
 

Also Known As

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

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.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.