webMethods.io Reviews

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.

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.

The API Gateway and the Portal go together. It's not one or the other. Essentially they're just leveraged for overall enterprise API management facilities, being able to go on the API development life cycle, being able to go on the API run time, API monetization, things like that. Usually, most organizations, most of our customers use APIs to supplement other architectures, typically microservices, based application architecture, and so on.

On the portal, the user management and the API life cycle management are definitely robust. 

They have nominal features for API. They have a self-serve API portal as well. That means consumers for APIs can come onto the portal and learn about various APIs that they can put into the consumption model. 

The initial setup of the cloud version of the solution is very easy.

The solution can scale.

The product is quite stable.

Technical support is responsive and quite helpful.

We have found the pricing of the solution to be fair.

On the API monetization side, being able to create separate consumption plans and throttle all those consumption plans towards the run time. Those are abilities that might need some improvements.

The on-premises setup can be difficult.

I've been dealing with the solution over the last three or so years at least.

The stability and performance are definitely very good. 3G really comes strong on an enterprise-scale in terms of stability and performance. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches.

The solution can scale quite well. A company that needs to scale can do so.

API management is all about internally leveraging the software development life cycle, across various domains. Typically, most customers, when they adopt API management, they are delivering it for their entire IT software development organization, not just the integration team. The application team and the database team and so on will also use it. Everybody will be on board. Sometimes we have seen customers onboard about 60, 70 developers and then maybe a few additional external consumers. However, we also see some customers with very small teams of around 10 people. It works well for both.

We've dealt with technical support in the past. There's always that possibility, especially with newer versions, that we might run into some technical issues. However, tech support and issue management are both pretty straightforward. 

You can now create a ticket on an issue with the portal on Software AG through Software AG's support portal. They respond within a day, and at least try to resolve the issue. Sometimes the issues might need a product or a quote fix, which might take a day or two. Otherwise, they might be able to look through the knowledge base and give us a solution immediately. In general, they have a decent response time and a decent quality of service. We're satisfied. 

In terms of setting up the solution, there are two ways. The first is that you can have an on-premise license and set up this conference yourself. That can be a little complex depending on what is the overall deployment architecture that is needed. On the other side, webMethods API also comes in a cloud form, the webMethods.io, and that is just a subscription. Most of our customers can just subscribe to it and they don't really have to worry about the setup. Everything is already pre-set.

Usually, while the on-premises setup is fairly complex, we don't really require people to be continuously monitoring it once it's launched. The setup itself might take less than a week or two, depending on the size of the enrollment. In terms of maintenance, unless there's a lot of APIs subsequently developed and running, you don't really have too much. Once the customer starts developing a lot of APIs and puts a lot of those APIs into production, that's what will contribute to the support and monitoring needs of the team. Typically one person can handle deployment and maintenance. Of course, the cloud doesn't really require the same amount of work. 

The pricing fluctuates. I don't have the numbers with me, however, I can say that they're not the cheapest in the market, and they're not the most expensive either. They fall right in the middle, and they're priced right for their capabilities and the quality of service as well as the stability and performance on offer. They're well priced for their general offering.

We are partners with Software AG. We've been a partner for more than 20 years now.

I'm an IT consultant. We are a consulting company, most of my teams are certified in Software AG technology, and we've worked for a lot of customers leveraging that technology.

We typically deal with the most up-to-date versions of the solution, although occasionally, one or two might be a version behind.

A lot of the API Portal and Gateway form the layer of API management, however, usually, API management does not go on its own. There's typically some level of an integration layer behind it as well. Either a customer is applying an API management layer on top of an existing integration layer, or, if not, a customer is starting fresh and has to apply both layers subsequently, or consecutively. It's kind of like creating an API management layer, and a hybrid integration layer. Both go together, especially in data integration, or in application integration and cloud application integration.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

In my company, the solution is used for SAP Integration.

The connectivity that the tool provides, along with the functionalities needed for our company's business, are some of the beneficial aspects of the product.

The feature I found to be most beneficial or valuable for our company's workflows revolves around the area of the broker functionality provided by the product since it has reduced a lot of effort.

The main reason my company decided to replace webMethods.io Integration is because of the integration capabilities in the newer versions of the tool. Whenever there is a new version of webMethods.io Integrations, there is a lot of work to be done by our company since the newer versions don't offer seamless integration. The aforementioned reason can be considered for improvement in webMethods.io Integrations.

With the solution, our company has experienced sudden outages at times. The product's stability is an area of concern where improvements are required.

Not just the cost related to licensing but also the cost of introducing new versions need improvement in the product. When you have an OS like Windows or Apple, in which some new features are installed when you restart your system, after which everything works fine, with webMethods.io Integration, the new features introduced in the tool don't just need you to stop and restart your application but expects you to update the whole application to be able to use the new functionalities, which is something that is good. My company does a business in which we have to create a complete project which costs a lot of money. In the future, I expect to not be paying a lot of money or extra work to be able to update the product, and webMethods.io Integration needs to update the product automatically.

I have been using webMethods.io Integration for three years.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

It is not a very scalable solution.

As webMethods.io Integration is a middleware product, it is difficult to provide a number of the solution's users.

I work with many products other than webMethods.io Integration. It was not my decision to use webMethods.io Integration in our company.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward, but it was a huge process.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

A technical team of eight members, including developers and administrators, is required to take care of the deployment and maintenance of the product.

The product's deployment process was carried out with the help of my company, DXC Technology.

The scenario where webMethods.io Integration is used to facilitate business process automation includes areas where data needs to be automated and integrated from SAP to third-party systems.

The solution helps me in my company with the integration area for some of the systems or applications, but we plan to replace it with another system.

I don't use the API management capability of the product to enhance your integration strategy.

I recommend the solution to those who plan to use the solution.

For my company's business operations, we use the tool's on-premises integration capabilities only.

I have noticed that the product works as expected, considering the fact that I have seen some improvements in areas like data management and quality since the implementation of the solution in our company.

Not just the cost related to licensing but also the cost of introducing new versions need improvement in the product. When you have an OS like Windows or Apple, in which some new features are installed when you restart your system, after which everything works fine, with webMethods.io Integration, the new features introduced in the tool don't just need you to stop and restart your application but expects you to update the whole application to be able to use the new functionalities, which is something that is good. My company does a business in which we have to create a complete project which costs a lot of money. In the future, I expect to not be paying a lot of money to be able to update the product, and webMethods.io Integration needs to update the product automatically.

I rate the overall product a six out of ten.

The solution offers a services catalogue that extends beyond monetization, acting as a source for API for external users and entities and monetization.

webMethods API Portal is overall very valuable. It is now a comprehensive API catalogue that serves various purposes, including API assessment and evaluation. The monetization module is particularly robust. It is applied across different sectors, including the government, and is known for its strong performance.     

The improvement needed is related to the model's position. As of now, it seems to be more of a conceptual idea rather than a widely implemented solution. Monetization is currently on the rise, driven by the growing demand for APIs. With everything being provided as APIs nowadays, it's crucial to grasp this concept and establish a robust solution for subscription plans and the price model.

I have been using the webMethods API Portal for the last seven years.

Since webMethods API Portal is regularly used by big enterprises, the performance needs to be the best. There can be no issues whatsoever, so it is stable. 

webMethods API Portal offers extensive scalability. Its primary focus is on catering to enterprises dealing with vast amounts of data or APIs. This solution appears to have certain minimum requirements that enterprises must fulfill to access it or make requests. It seems to be a compatible solution designed specifically for large enterprises managing huge data volumes. I would rate it seven out of ten. 

The support is available 24/7 and they are extremely experienced.

Positive

For APIs and gateways, I have experience with various platforms such as IBM MessageHQ, Microsoft Remote, and an Apache tool. In the case of IBM, there was a registry and certain tools that stood out, particularly the initial versions of the API gateway. These early versions were rather basic and targeted more toward experts or developers familiar with the system. While not the most user-friendly at the time, I believe IBM has likely evolved its offerings to include more advanced and user-friendly solutions. However, I acknowledge that my feedback might be somewhat outdated.

The initial setup is straightforward, but it requires extensive knowledge about the product.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

I don’t have much idea about prices, but webMethods API Portal is not cheap. 

The suitability of the webMethods API Portal depends on the organization's size. It's not appropriate for small or medium enterprises; rather, it's intended for larger enterprises. This is particularly in cases like ours, where it's utilized for managing big data APIs. As an example, we employ it to oversee the government's resources and permissions on a daily basis. This illustrates the significant volumes of data and APIs we handle regularly.

One of our clients is a chain management company. They have many APIs which do a lot of integrations, including B2B integrations. For that particular client, our APIs are on APIs check and handing the deals and restock. Everything is hosted on our API gateway. They can use a scan and access those APIs and do operations for sales orders and invoices.

The most valuable aspect of this solution for me has been the configuration-based UI. Once you get the hang of it, it enables you to easily develop an API. In addition, it has many in-built policies that are quite handy. We are also able to write our custom policies. I also like the daily logging option. Another handy feature is Kibana with the dashboard, which outlines the day-to-day operations in great detail.

There are things that could be improved with the webMethods API gateway. One thing is that it's too attached to the integration service and we'd like it to be a little bit more independent. We would like for them to separate operations so that it doesn't rely on the bulky integration server and so that it can be used everywhere. I would like for this to be included in the features since the client I work with always tends to avoid the solution. And if the client does not have existing interfaces with it, they choose not to proceed. 

I have been using this solution for more than 30 years.

I would rate the stability of this solution a 10, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

My impression is that this solution is scalable. I wouldn't say auto-scalable because of the on-premises part.

I would rate their technical support a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. The reason for this rating is that they are good, but they could still be improved. There is no premium support, and the regular support responds within a day or so.

Neutral

I would rate the initial setup process a six, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. I would say it's not too easy, but also not too difficult. It can be complex if you don't have experience with it and, in that case, you will not find the setup easy. 

For us, the deployment was fast; it took maybe a couple of minutes. One person can do the deployment on their own. The maintenance is done I think quarterly or every six months through patching.

Our model of deployment is on-premises.

I would rate the pricing plan of this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. The licensing is on a yearly basis.

This solution is a good fit for small, medium, and larger enterprise companies.

I would advise other people looking into this solution to get it because it adds an additional feature to the capabilities of your web method templates. Also, it uses existing web flow services to enable you to leverage your existing services that are already paired on your on-premises system or into the traditional system of your work method.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

We use it to manage and secure APIs. It is particularly useful when dealing with a large number of APIs from various systems like banking, government validation, and more. It makes sure data is accurate and protected and helps systems work well together.

What I like the most about the solution is that it comes with ready-made tools like handling security tokens and OAuth. API Gateway does the hard work of keeping things secure and managing who can access what, making it easy and safe without lots of custom work.

One area for improvement in webMethods API Gateway is orchestration. Currently, API Gateway lacks built-in orchestration capabilities, so organizations may need to rely on other applications for this purpose. For example, if you are calling two services and one of them fails, you may need another application to handle the rollback or recovery process. Improving orchestration within API Gateway could simplify complex service interactions.

I have been using webMethods API Gateway for almost two years.

The technical support is a bit slow. It took them more than two weeks for a single ticket. I would rate it a seven out of ten.

Neutral

Setting up webMethods API Gateway can be easy or complex. It depends on what your company needs.

It is an expensive solution and not very suitable for smaller businesses.

My advice to people who are considering using the solution is to keep in mind that if you have a background in software development, especially with Java, you will likely find it easier to work with the platform. Overall, I would rate webMethods API Gateway an eight out of ten.

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.