webMethods.io Reviews

We're a healthcare technology organization and that space has a great deal of integration work, so we use webMethods to help us manage and develop integration solutions for various healthcare-related needs. Those include HL7 messages, the new interop messages, the new CMS directives for data blocking, Affordable Care Act integrations, and integrations with other health systems.

Our particular product is a SaaS, multi-tenant environment that's on-prem but moving to cloud. It is used by hundreds of healthcare providers to run their businesses.

webMethods provides application integration, data integration, business-to-business communications, APIs, and microservices. We use it for all of those purposes. Having that range of features in a single platform is very important, because that means we have a single platform to learn and use. It reduces training costs. It reduces overall infrastructure costs. It even makes hiring easier because we have one set of resources we need to hire for.

In a very fast moving space—which is weird to say about healthcare, but it has certainly become that in the last few years, and especially in the last year—the ability to move very quickly and to reuse components and to connect to almost anything have become pretty paramount. The solution’s adapters and connectors provide the fastest way to build an integration. The demand curve for integrations goes up daily, so our ability to perform and build integrations is a key core competency.

Because we use most of the platform, it's hard to call out a most valuable feature, but it's probably the ease of mapping which is the single largest feature. It gives us the ability to craft anything. A lot of single-purpose technologies, like Mirth, are good for healthcare messages, but we use webMethods not only for healthcare messages but for other business-related purposes, like integrations to Salesforce or integrations to Office 365. It's multi-purpose nature is very strong.

The ease of deploy and maintenance of integrations is a key element for us. If the strength is the mapping tool and the ability to change quickly, and having all of the components that we can then alter as we need to, the result is that it allows us to react very quickly to changing business demands. For example, we have a need to send the same types of data to many different integration partners, and because we're able to tailor the delivery to each endpoint, but use one master flow, it allows great economies of scale.

I'd like to see the admin portal for managing the integration server go up a level, to have more capabilities and to have a more modern web interface.

We've been using webMethods Integration Server for four or five years.

It has been very stable.

We find that it scales very well. It's a true enterprise tool.

Our usage will increase as our business grows. It's a core part of our infrastructure.

The tool is very good and we haven't really needed to engage with support enough to know if their support for the solution’s adapters and connectors brings long-term stability.

Support has been there in the couple of times we've needed them. We have gotten a fine response. They completely meet our expectations of support for an enterprise tool. But typically, there's no need for them.

We had a couple of competing platforms: Systems Integration from IBM, and MuleSoft in the open source world. We switched to webMethods for the support from the company and the range and depth of available adapters and connectors. It gave us more capabilities.

We used an integration partner to help us stand it up, so the setup didn't really impact us. We had a total of two or three people involved on our side. We used The Normandy Group and our experience with them was very positive.

It took us about three months to have the first integration running. The implementation strategy was 

• install tool
• get it to work
• build first integration.

Those same two people in our organization are the ones involved in the day-to-day maintenance of Integration Server. We have two webMethods technical resources who are responsible for about 400 integration points or integration services.

We have seen return on investment from using it. We have to compute that every year, and the value is always greater than the cost. It's just that every year it gets harder to justify that value against the competitors. 

Keeping in mind that we haven't explored the microservices completely, which has been a key element of their innovation recently, I do think webMethods is coming under increasing pressure when it comes to their price-to-feature value proposition. It's probably the single biggest strategic risk they have. They're very expensive in their industry. They've been raising the price recently, especially when compared with their competitors.

I'm familiar with Mirth, in the healthcare space, and IBM SI is still a very large tool. Various other IBM platforms that will do similar things. The space has gotten more crowded over the years.

The single biggest differences between webMethods and the other solutions are the range of the offering, the connectors, the stability of the system, the fact that it is an enterprise-grade system, and that you can basically do anything you need with it. 

The con is the fact that you are paying for the best-of-breed solution in the space, and the expense of it can be quite high. When you couple that with the fact that adding Software AG services increases the cost very fast, there is a real detriment to our adding additional Software AG offerings to the portfolio. The sheer expense makes us reluctant to do that. It's still justifying its cost for us, currently, but I feel that there are open source solutions that are charging up very fast. Also, finding resources who are trained in the tool is becoming increasingly hard as they become increasingly more in-demand.

It's a very valuable and a very powerful tool, but it's a tool that you have to dedicate resources to, to learn and to use well. Use an integration partner to help get it stood up and in use in your organization faster. That is something that is very valuable. And then dedicate staff to learn it. This isn't one more tool in the toolbox. This has to become someone's toolbox.

The comprehensiveness and depth of its connectors to packaged apps and custom apps is fairly low, but its ability to build what you need is very high. The value of the tool is the Lego block nature of it, so instead of being framed into set paths, we can build what we need.

I would rate it at seven out of 10. The cost-to-feature value is what brings that number down. The difficulty in finding webMethods-trained resources in North America also brings that number down. The powerful, scalable, stable nature of the offering brings that number up.

It interfaces between applications, as well as between the cloud and our existing on-prem applications.

We primarily utilize packaged applications; we don't really have a lot of custom applications. We do have a few custom interfaces, and some vendors may have created a custom interface on their own, but we present a standard integration, a standard enterprise service bus, to connect to.

We're able to secure our front-end website away from our back-end systems using Integration Server. It acts as a go-between. That way, whether we're requesting things from our website or our IBR or our IPT, we can have multiple interfaces. They're secured in their own ways, and they don't have direct access to our back-end databases.

We're a utility company and before we got this application we would actually send out people to the meters to read them. Sometimes they had handheld devices, but sometimes they had to walk up to the meters. When we switched to AMI meters, we leveraged the ability of the solution to talk to each of the meters on a daily basis, as well as to turn a meter on and off in real time.

Additionally, we use the same application to process payments. Before this solution, we primarily had walk-in centers and a lot of manual processes for receiving payments. Very few payments were done online or via eCheck. Now we can have a whole host of payment options, as well as enable different payment vendors to connect. It has automated a lot of our manual processes.

webMethods Integration Server provides a single hybrid integration platform for all our needs. It provides reusability. We don't have to worry about taking each and every point-to-point integration. Now we are hosting a true enterprise service bus, by having a set of APIs that can really be leveraged and reused by multiple vendors and multiple connectors.

Its adapters and connectors provide the fastest way for us to build an integration. We're able to turn things around pretty quickly. I'm sure there are other faster ways that other people have done, but this meets our needs. 

It's helped us to become more modern. It's allowed us to service our customers in the ways that they want. They can now use on-the-phone payments or website payments or whatever way they want to do it.

Internally, it provides a standard way for us to be able to interface with things. Now, we don't have to have unique ways to do so and much more code and numerous ideas on how to do things. We just end up having a standard.

It provides us with ease of modifying and redeploying integrations. We have been able to do that very successfully. It just makes it easier. We were able to put in an Agile framework, which means that as requirements come up and changes are made, we're able to schedule them on a regular basis. But we were doing that for the long-term before, as well.

Its support for the latest standards make it possible to plug in modern tooling. We've used that in several places, especially for IoT integrations. The result has been reduced costs and improved customer satisfaction.

The most valuable feature is its ability to quickly spin up connections between the real-time interfaces, as well as being able to regulate how much traffic moves back and forth between applications. This is important because one of the things that we utilize it for is payments from our customers. We can have multiple customers utilizing the same set of APIs and they can make real-time payments into our system, which is really useful. We don't have to worry about people making duplicate payments or providing incorrect information. And we get that information right away.

Also, the solution has a very comprehensive and versatile set of connectors. I've been able to utilize it for multiple, different mechanisms. We do a lot of SaaS and we do have IoT devices and the solution is comprehensive in those areas. There's a standard utility protocol for talking and several of the applications we have utilize that utility. It's a standard set of APIs, and Integration Server adapted to that right away. For our website we're utilizing standard Wisdom APIs and we were able to create that. The solution is very versatile with all its capabilities and is able to do what we need to do. We even use it for Salesforce.

It provides us application integration, data integration, business-to-business communications, and APIs. We haven't used it for microservices. That range of features is very important to us. It conducts our real-time payment applications, as well as our real-time integrations between our internal applications.

The logging capability has room for improvement. That way, we could keep a history of all the transactions. It would be helpful to be able to get to that without having to build a standalone solution to do so.

I have used webMethods Integration Server for about 12 years.

We haven't had any issues. Everything has been working. We like the new version, the new upgrades. It seems they keep improving upon things. We've put in high-availability and fault tolerant solutions so we have had zero downtime due to the system itself.

We haven't run into any limitations up until now. We utilize it for a lot of different things, but we haven't run into any speed issues or other problems.

We end up talking to our customers using the solution and we have over 250,000 customers. Our internal users don't really even notice it. They just see that everything is up and running and available in real time.

We haven't run into an issue requiring technical support from their side. It's usually something that we have to adapt to or modify. It's usually something internal.

We used eCheck. It was website-based for point to point integrations. We switched to Integration Server to improve speed to market and have a quicker way to turn things around. We also wanted to put in some newer interfaces that would talk to all of our customers.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We were able to quickly utilize some templates, things that they already had, to get it up to speed.

We took our time. We developed and deployed our first product in eight months. Then, over the course of time, we were able to add more and more until we had a robust solution.

Our implementation strategy was to look at business needs to prioritize things.

In terms of maintenance, it only requires oversight, nothing too obtrusive. We've got one integration engineer dedicated to all of our integrations and we haven't had any issues yet.

webMethods provided the name of a third-party and then we reached out to them and we got them onboard. The company's name was Kellton Tech and they did a very good job. They're still with us.

We were able to realize ROI fairly quickly because we were able to reduce a lot of the manual work and point-to-point integrations. If you think of truck costs and the amount of gas expense, we don't have to worry about those on a daily basis anymore. Those alone would justify it.

It's a good deal for the money that we pay.

We went through evaluation criteria with three or four vendors and we found this one to be the best. The primary advantages of this solution were the supportability and ease of use. Also, the deployment time was reduced and development was more Java-based.

Start with proofs of concept. Create a few good proofs of concept and get it up and running and you'll be able to escalate things. Make them achievable.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using the solution is that I should have envisioned it a little bit bigger. We had a lot of point-to-point solutions that we could have considered and I think we still have a lot more to go. Also, if the back-end is not available, we should build in some logic that says, "Okay, now that I'm not getting a valid response or any response, I should be able to quickly use a default or turn off some features." We're trying to redesign and re-engineer it for that to happen.

As an overall product and solution, it has met our needs.

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.

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.

We primarily use it as an integration server. We have integration use cases, including B2B, et cetera.

It is reliable and works very well. 

The integration with platforms is great.

It's straightforward to set up. 

Technical support has been responsive when we need assistance.

It is a very stable product.

The solution can scale as required. 

We're fine with the product offering.

It is quite expensive. 

I've used the solution for more than a decade. 

The solution is very stable. I'd rate the stability ten out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It is highly scalable, to my knowledge. The organization has used it for almost two decades without issue. I'd rate the scalability nine out of ten. 

We have about 100 users on the solution. 

We do not have plans to increase the number of users, to my knowledge.

We've used technical support, and they have been fine. They are very responsive. 

Positive

I had used other products previously. I use this solution since it has a lot of use cases, and the organization chooses to use the product. 

It's easy to deploy. It has its own deployment tool, which makes it very fast. We can use it both on the cloud and on-premises. 

We have a 13 to 17-member team of developers that can handle the deployment. 

We handle the initial setup in-house according to the government model. Our IT team handles the process. 

I can't comment on the exact ROI; however, it is a very useful product.

The solution has a yearly licensing fee. It is very costly.

I'm not sure if there are any extra costs involved in using the solution. 

I'd recommend the solution to others, depending on the use case. There are many factors that would be highly dependent on its success. 

I'd rate the solution ten 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.

The tool helps us to streamline data integration. Its BPM is very strong and powerful. The solution helps us manage digital transformation. 

webMethods.io needs to incorporate ChatGPT to enhance user experience. It can offer a customized user experience. 

I have been working with the product for ten years. 

The solution is stable.

webMethods.io is scalable. 

webMethods.io's technical support is amazing. They have different mediums for communication, such as chatbots, emails, and phones. The response is based on the incident severity. They respond in a day even if the incident is of low severity. 

Positive

I have used IBM Message Broker and Apache. The product is much easier, and you do not need to have extensive knowledge. 

webMethods.io's deployment is not difficult and can be completed in a few hours. 

The tool is worth its money. 

webMethods.io is expensive. We have multiple components, and you need to pay for each of them. 

The product incorporates different layers of security, ranging from denial-of-service protection to IP denial and other features aimed at enhancing security. Given the importance of safeguarding information from exposure and unauthorized access, maintaining strong security measures is our key priority.

The solution focuses on low-code and zero-code approaches. This means users don't need extensive technical expertise. Instead, they can use drag-and-drop functionality.  I rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use the solution for application-to-application integration and B2B integration.

The synchronous and asynchronous messaging system the solution provides is very good.

Other products have been using AI and cloud enhancements, but webMethods Integration Server is still lagging in that key area. It's very good as a standalone integration server, but it has to come up with more features in the cloud.

The solution's API management is slightly lagging, and its API policies could be improved.

I have been using webMethods Integration Server for 13 years.

I rate the solution a six out of ten for stability.

I rate the solution a seven out of ten for scalability.

The solution's initial setup is easy for an experienced person, but a new person may find it difficult to set up everything. There are too many features and components. The setup could be easier if the solution could merge everything in one suit.

The solution’s pricing is too high.

The solution has impacted our system's scalability and ability because it is quite good and pretty fast.

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