IBM DataPower Gateway Reviews

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.

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.

I've been working with and supporting IBM DataPower Gateway locally for six years now.

From a technical point of view, IBM DataPower Gateway performs quite well, so my team had no concerns at all in terms of performance, reliability, and stability. When deploying IBM DataPower Gateway for banks and other financial institutions here in Hungary, I've observed that you can almost forget about it because it's a good product with no issues.

IBM DataPower Gateway is a scalable product, but Hungary is a relatively small market, so even the smallest size is sometimes too big for the customer. Scaling the product downwards would be better because it's more suitable for small businesses. IBM DataPower Gateway is less applicable to mid-size and large businesses.

We had no issue with the technical support for IBM DataPower Gateway. In the past few years, we had to open just very, very few tickets that were answered promptly. There was even one case where the physical appliance had a hardware issue. The power supply had to be replaced, and the replacement came automatically within the promised timeframe, so support was okay.

The initial setup for IBM DataPower Gateway was straightforward. The hours and effort dedicated to the implementation of the product were quite low compared to other products, though not necessarily gateways. You can do most of the implementation steps, and IBM DataPower Gateway requires a relatively easy configuration, and as it's out of the box, you can just customize it.

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.

IBM DataPower Gateway is still in an early phase with us, especially because of its price point. As some of our customers need a less functional and less costly solution, we're looking at other alternatives on their behalf, such as Kong API Gateway and WSO2, but we don't have too much experience with those solutions.

My company is a system integrator for IBM DataPower Gateway and other solutions in Hungary. My company also provides customer-side consultancy for some projects, particularly providing expertise for customer deployments and other related areas.

Just a few people use IBM DataPower Gateway within my company. There's a team of ten people that covers other solutions and competency levels as well. Only one or two people utilize IBM DataPower Gateway full-time.

What I'd tell others who want to implement IBM DataPower Gateway is that it's a reliable product.

My rating for IBM DataPower Gateway is nine out of ten. Technically, it's okay. It's only the price point that needs improvement because it's a bit expensive in some cases.

My company is an IBM partner.

IBM DataPower Gateway helps to provide security and control integration.

I have used IBM DataPower Gateway within the last 12 months.

The solution is scalable, our customers are mostly South African banks and they handle mostly transactions with this solution.

The support for IBM DataPower Gateway has been exceptional.

They help you depending on your severity and how you log the ticket. If it's a Tier-1 support ticket then it will get their attention. Or you can send it to your account manager for the relevant accounts to receive the help, or you escalate the ticket and you receive extra attention. They help you resolve the problem as they arise. Support with IBM and Microsoft have been more or less identical. You can receive the help you need as long as you know how to start.

The implementation of IBM DataPower Gateway was very quick.

BM DataPower Gateway is a great solution but when based on utilizations in the different streams others feel that this is an expensive product for one simple use case. They can achieve the same result with something cheaper.

Most customers' use case budgets are not inlined with the price of IBM DataPower Gateway. It is too expensive.

The previous CIO in IBM wanted to move away from DataPower Gateway. We are currently using ACE Platform because it does the bulk of the workload and Connect Direct. IBM was wondering why they were having IBM DataPower Gateway if they also have Connect Direct to do file transfers. They are currently re-evaluating the situation.

I would recommend the solution to others.

I rate IBM DataPower Gateway a nine out of ten.

I like the tool's security. Also, all functionalities are integrated within on platform. 

I would like the tool to improve its training. 

I have been working with the solution for three years. 

I would rate the product's stability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the tool's scalability a ten out of ten. We have many users for the tool in our company. We have plans to increase the software's usage in the future. 

We found the tool's deployment simple because we had developed many tools to implement it automatically. 

The tool's initial costing is expensive for small banks and financial institutions. 

You need to develop tools to improve the deployment of the solution. 

We use both cloud and on-premise solutions. We focus on the BFSI, one of India's largest banks, as well as the financial sector and telecommunications.  

We implement the solution for our clients and currently have more than 70 staff members on our team. 

Since it is a gateway, it provides a lot of security features. It's also easy to use with not much development needed. We can deploy mostly with the drag-and-drop policies. 

Right now, the programming language is only supported in XSLT and Gateway script. Offering another programming language like Python would be better for all. We had one difficulty with signing and encryption, which it doesn't support in the data pool but does in Java programming language. It wasn't contained in the latest algorithm, so that's an issue we faced with one customer. 

We have been using it for the last five years.

The data pool product is stable and we did not find any bugs. API management launched two years back and we consider it quite unstable because we still face a lot of bugs. 

The solution is best for medium to large companies and is easy to scale. 

We are in yearly contact with technical support. We have reported every bug and they try to fix them within a short span of time. If they can't fix bugs quickly, they include them in new releases and give an ETA to us. Knowledge base and response time could be improved. 

Neutral

This is the solution we currently implement for our customers. 

Initial setup is very easy. If you go with container deployment, it can be a little bit tricky. The first time you install a container you will face issues, but the next time will be easier. 

We implement the solution for our clients. We also provide maintenance every quarter to give support to the production environment. If the client needs extra features, the project is more complex and takes more development time. 

The cost is very high and requires all five components in the API management solution, such as API Portal, Analytics, and App Connect. But with MuleSoft, everything is with a single vendor. 

We want to explore MuleSoft and introduce it to our company. We are not going to replace IBM right now, but we want to be able propose either IBM or MuleSoft based on customer requirements such as features and cost. 

We are a gold partner with IBM. DataPower Gateway is quite cool but API Manage needs to be more stable. Without testing, they released the product into the market. This is what we have observed. Sometimes, even small features in the big product do not work.

I would rate this product an eight out of ten. 

We have a global banking customer who uses IBM DataPower Gateway to expose their APIs for customer use.

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.

From a security point of view, being an appliance in the DMC zone, IBM DataPower Gateway will take care of the entire security angle for the infrastructure.

The user interface or the application development perspective and customization of the tool could be a little better.

I've been using this product for more than five years now.

It is stable, and the performance is good as well.

It is easy to scale as the product itself has the capability to install it as a cluster. So it can be scaled vertically or horizontally.

We have a team of about 10 developers and 10 to 15 enterprise customers globally.

For this particular product, the technical support is good.

I would give them an eight out of ten because there are some stability issues related to new features that have been added. They could have tested them and released them later rather than releasing them right now.

Positive

The initial setup is pretty straightforward because it's an appliance, so you don't have much complexity from an installation and configuration perspective. I would give the setup process a five out of five.

We implemented it in-house. It hardly takes any time; perhaps a day or two.

The only maintenance you need to be worried about is upgrading the patches, and you need to make sure that you apply those on time. We have two people who are responsible for the maintenance and administration.

This product is a bit expensive as IBM products are costly assets. However, for enterprise customers it is a worthwhile investment.

The licensing cost is based on the PVU and will depend upon the number of CPUs used for the virtual appliances.

If you are buying the license based on the PVUs, then you won't have any additional costs because all of the features will be available. However, if you are not going with the product with the PVU and you're going with certain features, then you will need to add those features, specifically security features, and pay for them. That is, there are certain features that are on a pay-per-feature basis if you are not going with a PVU license.

I would give pricing a rating of three out of five.

If you are an enterprise customer, I would definitely advise that it is better to go for IBM DataPower. You won't need to have a proxy or any other security measures required in the DMC, and it is easy to implement and easy to maintain and scale.

Overall, I would rate IBM DataPower Gateway at ten out of ten.

Initially, we used IBM DataPower XI52, but have since switched versions. The operating system versions were different. We are using the appliance version.

We primarily use the solution for the integration and security gateway for opening the services outside company.

The solution is robust. We use the appliance version, which comes with good security features and trouble shooting tools. So, we are happy with the IBM DataPower. We are currently evaluating the CA product, especially as it concerns the API management. As such, we may choose to use the API management modules of the CA Gateway.

For the workloads that are not too high, appliance is a little bit expensive. This is especially true in the development test and UAT environment, in which we can use the virtual version of the product. For live environments, we can continue to use the appliances. 

We have been using IBM DataPower Gateway for eight years.

The appliance is a bit on the expensive side for the workloads that are not too high. This is especially true in the development test and UAT environment.

Improvements have already been made to the solution. For example, we wish to use the virtual version of the DataPower next year and will likely do so with all of our applications within a few years.

When it comes to the deployment, we use the appliance version of the product with IBM DataPower. Yet, with other applications, are cloud-based. 

I rate IBM DataPower Gateway as a nine out of ten. 

We're using IBM DataPower Gateway for API management more than anything else. When I started in 2018, it was being used in conjunction with IBM Integration Bus. We were doing all the integrations on the IIB then when it comes to API management and all the other gateway operations, including security, that does not have anything to do with APIs, we're are using IBM DataPower.

The solution is straightforward and for large organizations, it functions well.

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.

I have been using IBM DataPower Gateway for three years.

IBM DataPower Gateway is quite stable if you know your way around.

We have four customers that are using this solution. We have millions of users using this solution.

The scalability is a bit of an issue when you are a smaller firm because it can be quite expensive. If you are using an on-premise version, it's not as scalable because you need to buy the hardware devices. If you are using the virtual version, it's a little bit easier to scale.

The technical support is always available and I think it's one of the options they are charging us for. They are well-informed agents. You better know your way around the solution, otherwise, you're going to rely on technical support for a whole lot of things.

We have previously used Microsoft BizTalk Server. I've also worked with webMethods and a little bit of MuleSoft.

The installation is not that easy. 

I would rate the ease of installation a six out of ten.

The number of staff that we need for the implementation of the solution depends on the scale of the environment, but you certainly need a couple of engineers for the support and management. IBM has a set amount of people that are required.

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.

They have to reconsider the price of the solution. It's way too expensive. I don't think it's going to last that long in the market right now. There's a lot of other solutions that are out there that are doing the same job, or even better, with a cheaper price. Soon enough, IBM is going to run into trouble when comes to the price.

I have evaluated many other solutions.

I would not recommend IBM DataPower Gateway because there are other solutions that are better.

I rate IBM DataPower Gateway a seven out of ten.

We use this solution for exposing services to our partners.

What I like most is the stability.

There is quite a lot that needs improvement. It's a very complex product and it takes time to get to control it and to know it. It's all about gaining knowledge in it.

Also, the maintenance procedure of the physical machines and physical appliances is quite complicated, and there are some issues with it. Sometimes, when we deal with the maintenance process because the machine isn't booting, it comes down to working with support in the middle of the night.

The two biggest issues of this solution are the complexity and the maintenance procedures.

In the next release, I would like to see it easier to deeply, easier automated processes, easier maintenance, easier control, better monitoring, and I would like the information or knowledge documentation to be more accessible.

I have been working with IBM DataPower Gateway for six years.

Its stability is one of the best features.

We have a pretty low load. We have not had to scale it.

We have quite a few users in our organizations.

We don't have plans to increase usage in DataPower, only with IBM API Connect.

We don't have local support, we are in Isreal and it takes longer.

Technical support needs improvement. It is not always easy to connect with them.

We are also using IBM API Connect.

The differences are the portal and standards.

DataPower is a bit easier to work with. Also the analytics. 

It has a set of tools that make life easier when it comes to developing APIs.

It's very straightforward. It has no automation and no modern tools to make it possible to develop quickly and to deploy it quickly. It's pretty much old-school.

The licensing cost is very expensive.

Other options were considered, but approximately three years ago, I reconsidered and decided to proceed with IBM.

I would recommend working on the physical appliance and not the virtual one. Consider the licensing aspect, and try to evaluate it three to five years ahead.

Also, look closely at the competition as there are now quite a few good competitors, and make sure the features suit you best.

I would rate IBM DataPower Gateway an eight out of ten.