Microsoft Azure API Management Reviews

My primary use case is for Logic Apps events as well as for API Management functions provided by Azure. We are implementation partners and I'm a business architect.

I like the API management functions.

In terms of the flexibility of API Management, it's quite a complex solution when compared with Apigee. If they could come up with an easy way of enhancing, that would be a great help, particularly for those consulting.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

The solution is stable. 

We deployed a Kubernetes instance so that we can scale.

The technical support is great, they help us out whenever we need it.

Positive

From previous experience, I know that Apigee is more flexible than Azure API.

The initial setup is not so straightforward and really depends on the landscape. If a customer has different business streams such as credit cards, debit cards, payment accounts and credit accounts it can be more complicated. Things have improved recently. Previously, a deployment could have taken up to 18 months.  We can now do a similar implementation in around six to eight months. 

There are a lot of competitors in the market that provide the same kind of services but I think cost-wise and resource-wise, Microsoft is ahead and I recommend this product to our customers. That said, there are some functions we don't currently have. It's okay for a mid-size organization but for larger-scale deployments, it's lacking in some areas. As a result, I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

I use API Management for all of our AKS clusters.

API Management's price could be lower.

I've been using API Management for a year.

API Management is stable.

API Management is scalable based on the load.

API Management does not take long to deploy.

We used an in-house team.

I would rate API Management nine out of ten.

Most of the features are valuable to me. We are actively exploring the monetization aspect of Azure, and we are also working on a proof of concept to accomplish this.

The only complication I encountered was configuring the authentication in the API Management. That was a little difficult for me, but it gets better after that.

I could that the UI could be improved. All services have the use of Visual Studio to do the coding and to change the configuration. It would be beneficial to include that with Microsoft Azure API Management.

I have been working with Microsoft Azure API Management for more than two years.

Microsoft Azure API Management is a stable product.

It is easy to scale Microsoft Azure API Management.

We have fast-track support from Microsoft, which we do receive.

We are satisfied with the technical support of Microsoft.

The initial setup was simple, with no complications, other than the configuration of the authentication in the API Management.

Since everyone is isocentric here, it is reasonable for me. Rather than getting complicated with other licensing, and other products' licensing. There are many, many different types of licensing available in other products, such as perpetual for ten users. If you want more than ten users, you'll have to pay a higher license fee. As a result, we are not falling into those kinds of traps. Previously, we had to pay as you go.

I would rate Microsoft Azure API Management eight out of ten.

We are publishing microservices using API management. We have created various packages and policies that we are applying over there. We have also created a portal for developers so that they can see what we are doing.

The most valuable feature is the developer portal, which has source code examples in various programming languages to help developers learn the API.

It is possible to combine APIs and make a new product, which is a very good feature.

It is very user-friendly and easy to use. 

This solution is only available as a cloud-based deployment and it would be very helpful to have an on-premises version. This is driven by the fact that some of our clients have specific requirements and they do not want to be on the cloud.

I would like to have an administrator's option that shows me API usage and can generate bills that I can send to my customers. Currently, our customers can see the usage but not how much it is going to cost. For example, assume that you get 100 calls for free and then 100 more free each month, but after than, each call costs twenty cents or one cent, whatever the price is. The administrator can generate reports when the bills are available and can charge them to the customer. This could be done with a monetization module, which would be better than the manual calculations that we have to do now.

I have been using Azure API Management for almost one year.

I think that this is a stable solution.

Microsoft handles the scalability so you don't need to worry about it.

Microsoft's technical support is okay. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate them an eight.

Your first response will be fast but after that, it will be slow. Then, the technician might just say that they are not the right contact. From opening the ticket until final closure will take time. Generally, it takes the experts some time to comment. Unfortunately, everywhere is like that.

We did not use another API management solution prior to this one. We were developing applications and then moved into APIs.

The initial setup is very simple. Within a few days, one can understand completely how to use it. It does not require deployment because it is available on the cloud and everything is ready. In fact, there is no installation at all.

It will take some time to onboard your API and define your policies, such as those for security. It should take about ten minutes to get up and running.

We considered other options; however, our client is mainly a Microsoft shop and they were already using Azure for various things. As such, we did not fully evaluate other options. 

This is absolutely a solution that I would recommend for others.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The ability to easily connect back to Service Fabric is the most important for us.

The importing of existing APIs is extremely easy. It's one of the better products.

The main benefit is that we are already on ExpressRoute. It is easy to integrate into our local network. Because we are mostly a Microsoft shop, we mostly use Azure API management because we don't want to run in different cloud providers right now since we are a financial company.

Microsoft Azure API Management should have the ability to allow multitenancy.

While the solution works well for us, I would like to see simple or integrated reporting built into the solution.

There is always room for improvement.

I have been using Microsoft Azure API Management for two years.

Microsoft Azure API Management is extremely stable.

Microsoft Azure API Management is very easy to scale.

I don't have any prior experience. We haven't had any issues or needed to contact the product's technical support.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is very easy to set up.

Because everything is automated directly from our pipelines, maintenance is a very small task that we require.

It is very easy to deploy, and configure.

We are partners.

I would rate Microsoft Azure API Management an eight out of ten.

We use this solution because when there is a technical requirement sometimes there are technical constraints that need to be overcome, and that is best resolved through the API component. My organization predominately uses Microsoft solutions and this is why we are using this particular solution.

I have found this solution to be easy to configure, simple to use, and flexible.

If I compare this solution to others I have used in other phases of my life, having APIM being an Azure resource, it is easy to configure and deploy. However, this conversely reduced the flexibility. The difficulty is how do we configure it in a manner that a larger enterprise would probably want it to be. This creates a bit more complexity, working around the constraints of the resource itself. If comparing it to other solutions, it is more of a legacy design with an older approach. The various level components are still around resembling an on-premise type of design similar to other solutions, such as Apigee or Mulesoft. They are still predominantly carrying some legacy design. Which might be suited for organizations where they have a more complex network layout. APIM is easy to deploy, but on the other side of that, it is constrained to how Azure has designed it to be.

In an upcoming release, if not already added through an update, I think dynamic provisioning of the resource would be useful. Many times these API platforms, including others, such as Apigee, are still predominantly revolving around developers. The onboarding and the API life cycle are still revolving around humans. In this context, I would not suggest DevOps, but at least automation of common pipelines. If the platform can better support this in the workflow to provision and commission an API that would be beneficial as we work towards a more automated deployment concept. Even though there are templates, graphics, and API management commands right now, you are still in a way programmed deeply, customizing that workflow, as opposed to it being part of the platform itself.

I have been using Azure solutions for approximately four years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable because it is a cloud service offering.

I have previously used Apigee and Mulesoft.

Since this is a cloud-based solution you have to abide by those financial limits, this creates some different challenges compared to other solutions.

My advice to those wanting to implement this solution is in all technology areas, each solution is use case-specific. If you are already working on the pure Azure Stack, then APIM is something that I would suggest. Unless you have a very complicated API development use case I would not try to deploy, for example, Mulesoft or Apigee on Azure. Assuming you are working on a full Azure Stack solution. 

Since it is use case-specific, rather than trying to build out. I would rather use the other repertoire of Azure to do the API development, as opposed to trying to deploy other solutions under the platform and develop from there.

My philosophy is always, use what is available, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. Mulesoft may be powerful, but it is putting the cart on top of the wheel and try to build something on the cart. It is not a native approach.

I rate Microsoft Azure API Management a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case is for managing internal APIs, for ordering process APIs and in general process APIs, and resource manipulation APIs. We need an API management to get a better overview, and this is one use case with analytics parts. Another use case is security, being able to rotate API keys and to manage access at a signature point. Finally, we also have the developer portals with the self-service capabilities so that developers can request access to APIs through a developer portal and manage their own keys.

We are still in the ramp-up phase, so currently we have actively two or three guys using it. We're planning to increase usage. We're in partnership with Microsoft and I'm an enterprise architect. 

It's not the best product on the market which makes it difficult to pick a particular point that we like the best. It could be the integration in the Azure portal. In the Azure cloud it's directly connected with Azure ID, so if you stay in the Azure ecosystem, this user concept is an advantage. The solution also allows you the possibility to use VPN technology and things like that to connect your gateway directly with on-prem services and that's a valuable feature. And compared to other solutions the price is outstanding. 

R&P, the publishing process could be improved. They are currently restructuring it, I believe.
I'm not technical but we noticed that the old developer portal got deprecated and they're introducing a new one. It's not polished and still requires some development. It's the same with the publisher portal which I believe they've now integrated into the Azure portal. They're just starting to work with hybrids so it still requires input. 

It would be helpful if they were to include additional features and clearer configuration when it comes to API policies.

I've been using this solution for seven months. 

The SaaS offering is stable but the hybrid isn't stable yet. It's under development.  

By definition it's scalable, but I know there's a hard limit in requests per second. But this is officially documented in the price of the product so it is scalable but with limits. I believe for a scalable solution, probably KANN Enterprise would be best.

For beta, customer service was kind of difficult. But I think that we haven't gone further than the first level. It's a process, they first have to narrow down your requirements, it's not direct access to support with direct feedback. It will take time. 

This is the first solution we evaluated and we chose it mainly in order to gain experience which is why we called it an experience project rather than a proof of concept project. We figured out that for our productive usage, we will select a different vendor.

I believe the initial set up is straightforward via the Azure portal. But setting up the policies for the APIs and all of that, I can't say. I've had feedback from a colleague working with it that at some point he wished things would be easier but I don't have first hand experience. 

As mentioned, this is the only option we looked at. We chose Azure because it's easy to deploy and it's cheap. It's a good starting point and if they develop it further, it might be good for productive usage, especially if you are planning to use it as an API management platform for the services that are running in Azure. I think then there's no question.

I would rate this product a six out of 10.  

We use the cloud model. Our primary use case is for integration between different systems. There are many use cases for the API management tool, but the most common scenario is integration between different systems.

The ease of setting up a new solution is the most valuable feature. It's very easy to set up a new solution and to deploy it to production.

The developer console for external users could be improved, especially in the testing site. I would like to see the security management for the APIs to be more granular.

It is very stable.

It's quite scalable. We've tested it in different little scenarios and it's quite scalable.

For deployment, I would advise a specialist. There is no need to dedicate any staff to the maintenance of the solution.

I would rate their technical support an eight out of ten. It could use a bit of improvement. 

I previously used RabbitMQ for another project. Both solutions have different approaches. One can work on-premises. On the whole, I still prefer is Azure API Management. I believe it's an easier solution set up and run.

The initial setup was very straightforward and simple. The deployment only took a few hours. 

I deployed the solution myself. 

I would recommend this solution to someone considering it. I would rate it a nine out of ten.