webMethods.io Reviews

The primary use case of the solution is for our digital sale tool.

I really appreciate the form and application that indicate the API. 

The performance is good.

I would like the solution to provide bi-weekly updates.

I have been using the solution for seven years.

The solution is sustainable and stable.

The solution is on the cloud therefore it is scalable.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

I recommend the solution to others.

I'm using the product every day, and I'm working on many different projects. Most use cases are for using webMethods Integration Server as a middleware software or a middleware platform that is connecting to at least two different endpoints. It can be from one side, for example, database, web service, SAP, or any kind of connection, including Salesforce, and the other side can be the same. We are just establishing connections between these systems and doing some transformations and modifications of data in the Integration Server so it can be sent from one side to another.

Clients are mostly using it in order to connect some of their internal systems or to connect to some external systems and some other partner companies. Its benefit is that it's really useful for monitoring and tracking all the activities. And it's important, due to all the flows, all the data, go through this ESB, Enterprise Service Bus. 

The most important thing when using it is that there is a really good community from the producers, Software AG, and the Empower platform, where you can find almost every kind of error or problem that you face. You can find a solution right there in the community.

There is also typical support where you can create a ticket if you are not able to find the issue on your own. If it's something new, then they will approach you and help you in resolving it. 

The best features are these adapters. Software AG developed many different adapters for the usual databases, et cetera. I was not using Salesforce much. However, it's really handy that you have an adapter for these popular platforms. It's just plug-and-play.

When it comes to the user interface, I'm already really used to it. I cannot say anything against it. For me, it's easy to use.

When there is some issue or bug, they work on the development of that. And then, in the next release, they just fix it. I had a few situations when I faced some issues, and then I had to report them. Within the next three weeks, typically, it just gets fixed.

For code version control, you need to use some external software. It would be good to have it just built into the product so that you don't have to use anything external.

The interface could be modernized. 

I've been using the solution for about five years. 

If it's set up properly and if you do it in a good way in large-scale organizations, you need to have a maintenance team that is doing the maintenance and support. If it's working properly and updated properly with the latest versions of updates, then there should be no issues with using it. It is reliable. One of the main benefits of Integration Server is that it is reliable.

Our entire company uses the solution. There might be 100 people using it on a daily basis. 

Scalability is one of the main purposes of the product - scalability meaning that it can adapt to small customers, clients, and even to bigger systems and clients with a lot of data going through the Integration Server. 

Technical support is really good. They are replying really quickly. In a day or two, you can get a response for your issue, or probably even quicker if you mark it as urgent. 

For me, it's fine. I had some contact with Software AG support. They wrote really helpful. And a few times we even had some meetings with screen-sharing sessions so they could help and see the issue. It was really nice. 

I know there are a few really great options on the market; however, I do not have experience with them. 

When it comes to deploying the Integration Server, you just need to follow the documentation, which is really good. The documentation created by Software AG for using and working with each of the products is really nice, and I'm satisfied with that. For the first time you use it, you need to install the Integration Server on Windows or Linux machine or whatever, and if you follow the steps via the documentation, it should not create any issues.

The deployment can be done by one person. It might take an hour or two.

If you are installing many Integration Servers in a cluster, then these things take time to configure the clusters and all other setups related to the network. That said, for the basic product, if you want to use it just for your own purposes, if it's just one instance, it does not take much of your time to get it up and running.

There isn't much maintenance needed after the solution is live. 

The solution was deployed in-house. It's not rocket science. It's easy, and you can do it just by following the instructions. It's a really user-friendly installation.

I'm working in the development part of the company. I'm not aware of the prices.

I would say it's an affordable product. When it comes to big organizations, it's for sure affordable.

We are a Software AG partner.

I'm mostly using the latest version. I was using version 9.9 when I started. Then I was going through all the versions, including 10.1, 10.3, 10.5, and 10.7. Now, 10.11 is the latest one. However, I'm not sure that I started working on that one in any of my projects. 

We are a partner company of Software AG, the producer of webMethods.

New users should look for a list of references and companies that are using this product. 

For a large-scale organization, this is a must-have product. When it comes to Integration Server and the Enterprise Service Bus as the product which needs to be implemented in an organization, it has many benefits like properly monitoring, tracking, and controlling all the flows in the company and outside the company. It's a great product to have.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for webMethods Integration Server is for our internal application integration. We use it to expose REST and SOAP web services and to connect it with SAP.

We also use it as a bridge to transform web service calls. We'll use an ESB if we want to transform the protocol or the message. It's also used to connect our internal custom-written Java applications with products like SAP, which don't have an open standards interface.

We only use it on-premise. We are considering going to a hybrid setup but at the moment, we don't have it yet. Nevertheless, we still use the Integration Server to integrate our cloud applications. We only have cloud on-premise integrations and not cloud-to-cloud. That is also why we're not focusing on a hybrid setup.

Integration Server does our business-to-business integrations. It does all of our EDI integrations of passing over our Integration Server and our LAN connects to our internal applications.

Its adapters and connectors provide the fastest way to build an integration. We don't need to create our own implementations because we can use the adapters. We can immediately connect to the backend systems without creating a lot of our own custom code by using these adapters.

The vendor's full support for Integration Server's adapters and connectors brings long-term stability to our services because if something changes to the backend application, we don't need to bother with it. Software AG just adapts the adapter and we get a new version. It's much easier working this way.

Deploying a new application is rather easy. You need a deployer and to build a system. We have built something around it to add it to our continuous integration pipeline, but we have the necessary tools to test our production environments.

We use the same system to modify or redeploy these integrations. If we have a bug we'll adapt our codes and deploy a new version. The code changes need the most time. If it's a small code change, then it goes very quickly. If it's an important bug, it'll take more time. The deployment and build don't take a lot of time.

It's a visual tool, so our transformations can be quickly implemented without a lot of fuss. The fact that we have an easy way to expose REST services is also very interesting. It offers the possibility to connect over GMS to synchronize message brokers.

Using an adapter is quite easy. For example, the SAP adapter works very well, and connecting to custom applications is very easy.

We would use MQTT when we need to connect to IoT devices. For the other legacy apps, in most cases, we use the adapters. Acquiring an adapter is quite easy.

Integration Server provides us with application integration, data integration, business-to-business communications, APIs, and microservices. Internally we don't use it for data integration, but it is possible. We don't work with microservices but I know that it's also possible.

It is important to us that Integration Server offers us a broad range of features like application, data integration, and API. It's important to have that kind of broad setup because it's a service burst. It's in the middle of a lot of integrations. It has to be able to have a lot of features

In terms of improvement, it would be better if it adapted quicker to open standards. It took a while for API specification before the last version was available. The spec of version two was rather quick. 

With an integration platform, it sometimes needs to happen faster because you sometimes have clients or providers that already use new specifications.

I have been using webMethods Integration Server since 2011. 

I am very satisfied with stability. It's very stable, we haven't had any issues at all.

We had a lot of issues with our other solution but none with Integration Server.

There are many scalability options, it is possible to add core CPUs to your server or you can add additional servers. Both are possible, both are not complex. The only thing that you need to take into account is then the licensing, but there are no technical issues for scalability.

Technical support is okay. It's comparable with other companies. It of course depends on the kind of issue that you have, but I'm rather satisfied with their support.

We were using IBM before webMethods. We used a combination of the two. When we started we had both webMethods Integration Server only for B2B. We used WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus for internal application integration. It's easier to have only one. That is the reason that we chose one of both. The second reason was also that IBM was deprecating their product and asking to switch to another one. Instead of going through IBM, we figured we could do everything with webMethods which is why we completely switched over.

webMethods had a very good overview of all transactions. That was the main reason we went with them.

The initial setup was of medium complexity. It's new so you need to learn it. A tool like this is never easy. webMethods Integration Server was easier than a different solution that we were using. But it's not a walk in the park. You need to spend time on it. There are configuration settings that can't be avoided. It's a complex feature set. We have had more complex systems also in our landscape. It's not just "click, click, click, done."

I was not involved in the initial deployment. But I know that they upgraded to webMethods Integration Server in a month. It took a few months to learn everything in the system.

We worked with a consultant for the deployment. We worked with a consultant from Software AG which went well. We have also worked with other consultants from consultancy companies that were not directly linked to Software AG but work with a lot of Software AG products. They helped us to set up our webMethods products.

I don't think webMethods is the cheapest but I think the quality is worth it. But it's not cheap.

We're satisfied with our choice and the price is not a reason to look for something else.

It's wise to work with a consultant when you introduce Integration Server because you need to learn about the product. It's better to have advice from someone who already has experience with it.

I would rate webMethods Integration Server an eight out of ten. I'm quite happy and satisfied with it but nothing is perfect.

We don't use webMethods Integration Server directly, but we use another offering from one of our vendors. They have built a layer on top of the webMethods Integration Server and that's a solution we have been using.

webMethods Integration Server is the underlying component, but our software vendor, has made some enhancements to the webMethods Integration Server and they offered it to us. That's what we are currently using along with some of the other solutions in the supply chain space.

Their offering is more of an integration framework across all their systems and this is how we have been using the system. webMethods Integration Server is our primary integration tool across all the solutions that we have in our supply chain.

The most valuable feature of webMethods Integration Server is all the capabilities it provides. We leverage most of the features, that they have offered to us. Our vendor has made some additional features on top of the webMethods Integration Server and we use all the features together.

webMethods Integration Server could improve on the version control. I'm not sure if Web Method has some kind of inbuilt integration with Bitbucket or GitHub or some kind of version control system. However, that's one area where they can improve. 

The migration of the code between environments could be better. If they come up with some kind of a continuous integration process to promote the code from one life cycle to the other, that may ease the day-to-day activity for us.

I have used webMethods Integration Server for approximately seven years.

webMethods Integration Server is a stable solution for our usage.

The scalability of the webMethods Integration Server is good.

Our IT team is using the solution in my organization.

We plan to increase our usage in the future.

I have not needed to use webMethods Integration Server support.

We used other solutions before using webMethods Integration Server.

The maintenance team needed for webMethods Integration Server is minimal.

We have seen a return on investing using webMethods Integration Server.

I rate our return on investment for webMethods Integration Server a four out of five.

The solution has been doing the job for us, at least with respect to the landscape and the integrations we have in place. However, it is on a case-by-case basis.

I rate webMethods Integration Server an eight out of ten.

We had multiple integrations in our internal applications. The webMethods Integration Server is integrated internally, plus we have integrated it with external entities depending upon SOAP, and REST. Additionally, there is some legacy system we have connectivity with.

The most valuable feature of the webMethods Integration Server is the built-in monitoring, auditing, RETS, and SOAP services.

I have been using webMethods Integration Server for approximately two years.

webMethods Integration Server is stable.

The scalability of the webMethods Integration Server is good. You can scale out by purchasing extra licenses in the new nodes.

We provide a public service, we have more than 1,000 users using this solution.

The support is good but they could improve by being faster and more knowledgeable. I only have one incident in which I needed support. However, I fixed it myself because it was taking too much time for the agent to understand my issue. The agent was not able to handle the issue. During the communication, I found out about the issue, and I fixed it myself.

I rate the support of webMethods Integration Server a four out of ten.

We were using MuleSoft previously. We move to webMethods Integration Server because there was no local presence for MuleSoft.

The initial setup of the webMethods Integration Server is not easy but it gets easier once you know it. It is tiresome but not difficult.

We deployed webMethods Integration Server for our development and staging, and then we moved on to production. Regarding development and staging, there are single servers for production and we have multiple nodes for each.

We did the deployment of the webMethods Integration Server in-house. We have a team of eight that does the deployment and support of the solution. One is an administrator for the management and the others are developers.

webMethods Integration Server has a very good API gateway. It will help your development become easier, because most of the services, we do not have to make any extra changes. We can do it by the gateway. I recommend that the portal which is on the front-end be the gateway, and on the back-end is the integration service.

I rate webMethods Integration Server an eight out of ten.

We use ActiveTransfer to call internal APIs and transfer files from a third party to the cloud for application purposes and from a third party to on-prem. We also send files to the third party sometimes. We have a payments system and transfer files across the system to make customer domains.

We have on-prem, cloud, and hybrid deployments and transfer files across all of them. We're working with webMethods cloud, AWS, and Azure. Our eight-member team is using webMethods MFT and other integrations, and we have a shared team to work on multi-technologies, like web issues, Snowflake, webMethods MFTs, etc. 

ActiveTransfer lets us maintain the file in the staging area before we transfer it. After that, we can remove the file to make sure that the reconciliation process is done. Sometimes we will zip and unzip the files, but if we have a GKB file, we often ignore it. 

Some things could be improved, especially how ActiveTransfer handles third-party file transfers. It would be nice to have a native file-watching mechanism for when you're scheduling jobs with a third-party scheduler. 

Currently, we are using an outside file watcher solution to check the files before the file transfer. It checks the location to see if the file is there. If the file is there, it will prepare it for transfer. If the file isn't available, it will send an email it can create a ticket send it now. We recommended adding this file watcher mechanism. 

Also, when we're dealing with massive files, ActiveTransfer requires huge amounts of RAM, but if would be helpful if we could customize the compression and encryption to squeeze that data and reduce the size to save on system resources.

We have been using ActiveTransfer for six or seven years.

ActiveTransfer is stable.

ActiveTransfer is easy to scale and use also, which is why we recommend it. We have a script-based file transfer, but we use it less compared to MFT.

webMethods' technical support is excellent. When we have issues with third parties, networks, corrupted files, etc. we send the logs and they take care of it.

The difference between webMethods and Control-M is that Control-M schedules automation tools and checks to see if the file is there. Our team is currently using Control-M. 

If you use MFT and you've cleared the MFT events, it has to schedule through Control-M because all the jobs running through the solution end to end. Control-M has an AMF advance remain file transfer, where you can create a source and target profile.

Setting up ActiveTransfer is straightforward. I rate it eight out of 10 for ease of setup. As for maintenance, we have a monitoring mechanism in place and an automated process for large-scale transfer. If the current available space at the target is less than 30 percent, we have an alert.

We do it all in-house based on the customer's request. We'll keep all the files in the staging for one week. If necessary, we will remove it or move it to some other location. This kind of housekeeping and maintenance we do.

I'm not aware of the exact cost. That product team at my company is responsible when we need any maintenance, new products, upgrades, etc. 

I rate webMethods ActiveTransfer eight out of 10. They only need to improve a few minor things to bring it to the current market standard. My recommendation to webMethods is to add more flexibility to the file-watching mechanism to reduce the load on the RAM and CPU to a minimum, which will help when we are dealing with large numbers of massive files, especially in the retail environment.

We used to deal with millions of small files. When you are dealing with these kinds of files, you need to ensure that there is an internal reconciliation process. When you're reading and transferring thousands of files, you use a parallel instead of sequential mechanism to ensure all the files reach a target and that the reconciliation process is done automatically.

One of the most important features is that it gives you the possibility to do low-level integration. It provides a lot of features out of the box, and over the years, it has matured so much that any problem that is there in the market can be solved with this product. We can meet any requirements through customizations, transformations, or the logic that needs to be put in. Some of the other products struggle in this aspect. They cannot do things in a certain way, or they have a product limitation, whereas, with webMethods, I have never faced this kind of problem. When clients come to me with any problem, in about 99% of cases, I say, "Yes, it is feasible to do through webMethods." It has reached such a level of flexibility and maturity. Most of the things are available out of the box, and even if something is not available out of the box, we can customize it and deliver it for a client's requirements.

Version control is not very easy. The packages and the integration server are on Eclipse IDE, but you can't compare the code from the IDE. For example, if you are working on Java code, doing version control and deployment for a quick comparison between the code isn't easy. Some tools or plug-ins are there, such as CrossVista, and you can also play with an SVN server where you have to place your package, and from there, you can check, but you have to do that as a separate exercise. You can't do it from the IDE or webMethods server. You can't just right-click and upload your service. CrossVista came up with a solution, which was with the upgraded version of webMethods, but even that was lagging. CrossVista was a bit delayed in coping with the new versions of webMethods. Many times, we get into a situation where we want to know who made a change, when it was made, and how it was before the change. When something that was working well previously suddenly stops working, we want to go back and see who made that change, but because of these version control restrictions, we have to take a longer path. We have to go to the version control system. There is no direct feature in webMethods for that.

There should be more visibility. Currently, Software AG has multiple tools. They have webMethods, and then they have Terracotta as a different product. They have an API governance tool as a different product. They also have Trading Networks. Some of the tools have a very good UI, and some of them don't. For example, earlier, there was a message broker, and you were able to visualize what is happening to a document on the server. You could plug in a broker and see everything. You could see the number of documents that are there on a broker. You could see different queues and topics created. They then moved to Universal Messaging, which is a nirvana-based universal messaging solution. Now, the plug-in is gone, and from the MWS server, you cannot see what is happening in UM. A different view is created for that in Enterprise Manager, which is a desktop UI application. It is not a browser-based application. So, sometimes to monitor different tools, you have to go to different screens. Everything can't be monitored centrally. If you have MWS, not everything is on MWS. Command Central is a different screen altogether. There should be a centralized UI on which every component can be plugged in so that it's easy to control, view, and monitor everything. That's what I really want to have. The Universal Messaging Enterprise Manager is especially very difficult. Sometimes, it takes time to launch on your desktop. It is basically a desktop application, and you need to have a powerful laptop or hardware to launch it. They should make it a browser-based solution.

Their support could also be improved. They could be more responsive and quicker.

I have been working with this solution for almost 12 years.

Its stability is very high. It is very stable, and I've never seen it crash. In my 12 years of career, there have been hardly one or two instances where there was an issue, but that was also because of some issue in the development where we had memory leakage.

Its scalability is good, but you have to plan it in advance. When you are designing your overall infrastructure architecture and delivery framework, you need to put scalability at the core of it. Once your infrastructure is set up, it's not very easy to scale it up or down.

Most of the time, admins interact with the support because they handle day-to-day installations or upgrades. I have had some experience with them. I don't have much experience. I hardly had one or two instances where I had to interact with them. It was not very smooth. It was okay. I ultimately managed to get support, but it was not very straightforward. The ticket lingers on for two days or three days, and there are multiple reassignments before it reaches the right party. Based on the little experience I have had, I would rate them a three out of five.

I have not got a chance to work a lot with other vendors. The first ESB I used was OpenESB, which is Glassfish-based. It was ultimately owned by Oracle when they acquired Sun. I used it back then. I also got a chance to work a bit on microservices and Apigee. Microservices are based on Spring Boot. So, it is a Java product. Apigee is an API governance tool. It is now a Google product. 

Apigee is a very good tool for API management, but a lot of scripting and coding skills are required. You need to be a genuine coder, and you should have an understanding of JavaScript, Python, or whatever else you are using to work with Apigee, whereas with webMethods API governance, even if you're working as a developer or designer for the integration server, you just need to know the basic concepts of programming. You do not need to know .NET, Java, etc. You just need to know about the integration. You should know how a web service works, how an API works, and how SFTP works. The tool itself is based on Java. It also uses Eclipse IDE. It has similarities with Java. If you feel that something is not achievable through what is provided out of the box or you want to do it in a slightly different or optimized way for your requirement, it gives you an option to write a Java service. There is an option to write Java code, but as the product is becoming mature, the requirement for a Java service is becoming very less. The product is evolving based on the learning of the user experience. It is evolving based on the problem statements and the scenarios where the product was not giving sufficient solutions. They kept including any missing functionalities in the new versions. That's why now the requirement to write a Java service is minimal. In a team of 100, if you have two Java resources, that is more than enough.

It depends on what role you are playing. Are you working as a developer or are you working as an admin? For a developer, it's very simple. It's not very complex. You just need an Eclipse-based designer IDE and a browser installed on your machine. That's all. You are all set. However, as an admin, you have to install and maintain all the components. You have to install the patches, and updating these versions is not very smooth. The update manager that they have provided is not very accurate. Sometimes, it fails. If it fails in between, it is very difficult to recover from that failure. So, from an admin's point of view, it is a bit difficult, but from a developer's point of view, there is nothing much.

We generally have webMethods Integration Server on-prem. We are deploying it on-prem, and there is a deployer, and there is also a webMethods IO component, which is more cloud-based. The VM on which it is installed could be hosted somewhere on the cloud, which is a different story, but the product itself doesn't have any cloud capability where you can directly put it on a cloud provider host.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We are using it to orchestrate and configure our APIs.

I believe we are using its latest version.

We needed a tool that was able to orchestrate and help us configure our APIs so that we could maintain and see the heartbeat, traffic, trends, etc.

A while ago, they were hacked, and it took them a very long time to open their website again in order to download any service packs or any features. I don't know what they could do differently. I know that they were vulnerable, and there was some downtime, but because they were down, we were unable to download any potential service packs.

I have been using this solution for about three years.

I would rate it an eight out of 10 in terms of stability and scalability.

We used Dollar Universe or Dollar U. It was more for batch scheduling. We didn't have anything for maintaining, configuring, or hosting our APIs. It was more of a manual process before that.

It is a little complex, but we're okay with that. MuleSoft is obviously the Cadillac and the best of the best, but we just didn't want to pay that sort of price for what MuleSoft can do.

We partnered with our implementation partner to do the install for us. 

Its maintenance is more of a shifting of duties. There are no new FTEs for it. It is just a shifting of duties.

I signed a three-year deal with them. It is a yearly locked-in price for the next three years.

I was the architect of it, and I wasn't personally the one who went deep into it. My advice would be to just partner with an implementation team and make sure that things are documented so that for upgrades, you're not married to them, and you don't have to use them all the time.

I would rate it an eight out of 10.