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IBM DataPower Gateway vs Microsoft Azure API Management 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

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)
Microsoft Azure API Management
Ranking in API Management
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.8%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure API Management is 20.5%, up from 20.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Rajiv Bala Balasubramanian - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently manages and monetizes API
It is a scalable solution. You can add more computing power to your APM gateway. It also gives you the ability to have VNet integrations with your on-prem. It is one of the leading products in the API management space. It is not just software for users but software to handle requests. For example, for a B2C e-commerce store, all requests that users make from within the store pass through this API gateway. So it is defined by the number of requests to the API gateway, not by the number of actual users who use it. If you look at the number of requests, it would be a lot from all the different systems we have within Pampers.

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 most valuable features are AAA policies and security features."
"The most valuable features for our business include the ability to monitor and log data transactions and handle multiple request at an enterprise level."
"The solution is robust."
"If you have an API application in your organization that you want to make safe and secure, in addition to your existing WAF or load balancer, this product comes with all those capabilities:"
"The performance is good. It's been very stable."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"It can look for the various security threats, productions, payload scanning, and perform routing based on the content type."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"Allows the possibility of VPN technology to connect your gateway directly with on-prem services"
"Without a doubt, it has a very robust, strong marketplace where we can directly integrate with existing APIs and begin working on those."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure API Management is monitoring. When compared with Apigee, I prefer Microsoft Azure API Management."
"The tool helps to manage APIs."
"We're pretty much using all of the monetizations features out of the API manager so we can put up a portal and have a dev portal and then a prod portal and do rate limiting."
"This solution is very flexible, and it's very compatible with the other Azure products."
"It is easy to use."
"The API management is great."
 

Cons

"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 components that they include in the product that are, in fact, a WTX, really need to be removed from the product because they tend to fail."
"The product's cost for data appliances or hardware is quite high. It needs improvement."
"We are always looking for more features wherein it could be easily integrated with cloud applications. We are looking for either a cloud solution or a cloud integration option."
"In the next release, I would like to see the product price reduced. It should be cheaper."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"Additional documentation needs to be provided for complex automations."
"There is a limitation of 32 kb of data in the APIs. Having the limitation increase would be a benefit."
"It should be easier to integrate."
"The implementation has room for improvement and can be more user-friendly."
"Documentations for implementing certain product features are very difficult to find"
"Other products have more customization options."
"What would make Microsoft Azure API Management better are more APIs. They keep updating their APIs, but it would be better if the solution had more APIs for the services and more integration with other platforms."
"I would like to see more security features become available."
"It could be more user friendly for developers. It would be nice if developers could view things more easily."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"It's expensive when you compare it with others."
"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."
"Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"The cost of this product varies from customer to customer and the relationship with IBM, including how many offerings from IBM are already being used."
"The solution is expensive in comparison to other products."
"There are no additional costs above the main license."
"Compared to other solutions the cost is a seven out of ten."
"Licensing fees are paid on an annual basis."
"Azure is a pay-as-you-go model. You build out your virtual environment and pay a monthly price depending on CPU cores, storage, etc."
"The price of the solution is reasonable compared to others."
"The licensing fees are expensive."
"It's free for less than ten users. If you want to go beyond that, it's around $3.50 per user per month. If you want a DevOps integration, it's about $7.50 per user per month. Costs depend on the size, complexity, usage, and what facility you want to integrate. So, we use Microsoft Azure and have the entire DevOps and Visual Studio on the cloud. We get all three flavors for $7.50 per user per month."
"It's an expensive solution"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
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.
How does Apigee differ from Azure API Management?
Apigee offers both cloud-based and on-prem options while Microsoft Azure API Management currently only offers a cloud-based solution. Both solutions are easy to use. Apigee allows for the ability...
Which is better - Azure API Management or Amazon API Gateway?
If you use Azure products, API Management is a great solution. It solves many of the problems of externalizing web services. For example, when you need versioning, establish a developer portal and ...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure API Management?
Microsoft Azure API Management is a good, comprehensive solution for enterprise implementation.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
Azure API Management, MS Azure API Management
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH, Opensistemas
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. Microsoft Azure API Management and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.