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IBM DataPower Gateway vs SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite 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
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (4th), Application Infrastructure (6th), SOA Application Gateways (1st)
SEEBURGER Business Integrat...
Ranking in API Management
23rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (6th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (14th), Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the API Management category, the mindshare of IBM DataPower Gateway is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite is 0.5%, up from 0.3% 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.
VARUNKUMAR - PeerSpot reviewer
Great end-to-end integration, data mapping, and communication protocols
At this moment, everything is working fine. When we are talking to them, when we are trying to bring all this mapping in-house, right now, SEEBURGER is doing everything for us. However, when we are thinking of going onto the cloud, so they are not using any of AWS or Azure which are more stable. They have their own private cloud. That's the reason we did not go ahead with managing everything by ourselves or moving into the cloud. They said that they're going to be doing it within the next two years, having access to Azure and AWS. That would be something we would like to see.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's high-speed and it can be remotely administered via an API."
"The API Connect gateway service and the SQL injection feature is good."
"Support for PCA and non-PCA services is valuable."
"The solution is robust."
"I like all of the features in this product and it does what it's supposed to do."
"The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is the security appliance, it's very secure."
"The stability is world-class. It is as good as any of the other options out there. They have addressed hiccups quickly, professionally, and with an excellent response."
"Mapping Designer provides excellent flexibility."
"It has a lot of basic EDI already established for all the main users. Also, it lets me share setups that I had already set up for my first plant. I was able to use them for my second one which was very helpful. I didn't have to start from scratch for my second facility."
"What would have been a manual process of transmitting data items around between us and third-parties has been automated. SEEBURGER BIS handles the automation and mapping side of the communications. The automation, along with the efficiency around time and cost, has improved our organization. Around 20,000 messages a month have been automated. These typically would be financial/order transactions and confirmations in invoicing that have been automated."
"We use Message Tracking, which is a very good feature. Message Tracking has about 300 to 400 business people who can find documents and ask the integration team about them. For example, they looking for a document that the vendor or trading partner tells them that they sent, but they don't see it in the ERP system yet. So, they go to SEEBURGER Message Tracking, which can tell them if we received it already from the outside and what happened, e.g., if it went to SEEBURGER BIS or if it's already in the ERP system. It's a very simple tool to use. They also can use that tool to see the source document."
"One of the things that SEEBURGER always touts is their ability to do "any to any" formatting... it doesn't matter if you want to take a CSV file or an XML file or a flat file or a PDF file or a structure EDI file; you can transform it from one format to another - any to any or even to the same format - which is a really nice feature."
"Having the SEEBURGER consulting team perform the installation alleviates a lot of headaches and ensures a stable system."
"SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite (BIS) also allowed us to connect EDI vendors at will."
 

Cons

"It is a costly product."
"The solution requires a lot of training manuals in order to get to know it better and to be able to use it effectively."
"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."
"They should add features to manage API integrations."
"They should improve the solution's clustering features."
"The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better."
"The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures."
"In terms of OEM support, it is poor. If I raise a CBRT one, as per the SLA, they should respond in one hour, however, sometimes it takes four or five hours to respond."
"I would've liked, from day one, to learn how to do my own mapping. That would have saved a lot of time and effort if that had been brought forward earlier. It's there, I just didn't know about it. Also, some tidier, easier-to-use interfaces would help."
"In the BIS, if I want to have some API functionalities, that is a separate tool. The integration between the API tool and the BIS is not that straightforward. If they were to combine these tools and give us one suite, that would be helpful. Today I have a lot of partners onboard. I have something like 50,000 partners doing API transactions. If I want to introduce a new tool for API management, I have to do a lot of workarounds. But if it were integrated well within the existing suite, it could be straightforward for me."
"They have their own private cloud. That's the reason we did not go ahead with managing everything by ourselves or moving into the cloud. They said that they're going to be doing it within the next two years, having access to Azure and AWS. That would be something we would like to see."
"The initial set up was done by SEEBURGER consulting. It can be complex due to various factors, such as server settings, database settings, and security settings."
"In some of the other tools out there in the market, you can create one service and use that service without creating a copy. That kind of capability currently doesn't exist in this solution."
"SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite does not have an end user or subscriber console which can show the traffic status."
"Java is very old technology and they should move away from it, to anything that's better."
"There are a lot of service packs during the year. I know that part is the process for updating features, but sometimes it's difficult to update service packs every month."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high."
"The licensing cost is very expensive."
"The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution."
"The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions."
"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."
"I've heard that the solution is cheaper when compared to other products in the market."
"We have additional ad hoc development costs, but those vary depending on if we're bringing on another third-party into our systems via the EDI integration. So, that's highly variable."
"Pricing, compared to the tool that we had earlier, is cheaper."
"I have had exposure to other big vendors over the years and would have to say the pricing is pretty typical. They all fall into a common pricing range, at least the bigger vendors: Axway, IBM Sterling, Globalscape, and SEEBURGER. They all fall into that mid-tier pricing. So, SEEBURGER is commensurate with other large integration vendors operating in this space. Maybe it is lower than some of the really high-end ones. You can get some of these high-end transactional messaging integration systems, like TIBCO, that tend to be kind of on a higher echelon of pricing. I would say SEEBURGER is more mid-level."
"Pricing has always seemed fair."
"The pricing is cheap. In fact, when I saw the pricing, I thought, "Really? What's the catch?" But the functionality that we get out of it, for the price we pay, is great value."
"We pay maintenance of between $75,000 and $100,000 per year, per box."
"They need to be more competitively priced. When it comes to training, they need to lower their prices. It shouldn't be so specific. Maybe they should outsource training to another company. From what I can see, their training is pretty expensive, and they don't do anything for free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Insurance Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Logistics Company
6%
 

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...
What do you like most about SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite?
SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite is a highly stable solution that offers rich features for our B2B integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite?
I've heard that the solution is cheaper when compared to other products in the market.
What needs improvement with SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite?
The solution's documentation is not up to the mark and needs to be improved.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere DataPower, IBM DataPower, IBM WebSphere DataPower
SEEBURGER BIS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RBL Bank, Availity
Altis, Autoliv, Cebi, Cofresco, MoneyGram International, Samsonite Europe, VSP Global, BMW Group, OSRAM, Magna, Lavazza
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM DataPower Gateway vs. SEEBURGER Business Integration Suite and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.