webMethods.io Reviews

We have a lot of use cases for this product. Initially, when we bought this product from Software AG, it was only for a specific project. But, we did watch for other opportunities where it could be used for integration and that's what happened.

Our business model has many verticals, so it's used across the enterprise. The main function is to provide application integration within the company. We have more than 60 applications and at the moment, it's talking to more than 30 applications and integrating them. In this context, it is used by our sales team and in a lot of automations.

Our second use case is to provide Write as a Service. We write any custom service using webMethods and then expose it to others as a REST service.

Another thing that we use this solution for is managed file transfers.

We have this solution deployed in a hybrid environment. It is available in our private cloud, where it is installed in AWS, and we also have it in our data center.

This solution has improved our productivity and efficiency in pretty much all of our applications. There are some currently-running automation projects where we are going to have to transform data and at the moment, it is being done manually. This is another case where we will implement webMethods to improve productivity.

We automate our sales cycle using API orchestrations. When sales come through, for example, we register them and enroll them in the policy. All of this is done within webMethods and it works well.

With respect to the comprehensiveness and depth of connectors that are available, they have a lot of traditional ones available. They are constantly adding new ones, which is good to see. However, what we found is that we can develop them very easily. Nowadays, pretty much everything is REST so it is easy to develop your own. We do not have a license for many of the connectors. One of them that we have is Salesforce, which was what we had originally envisioned.

Then, what happened when we needed another connector is that we reasoned that rather than buying additional ones, we would instead create our own. Ultimately, we found that it was quite easy to do and in my experience, it is always better to use your own because the out-of-the-box connections have limitations. This is what we found with the connector for SuccessFactors; we were better off building our own because there are no constraints when we do it that way.

This solution encompasses a range of features, which is important to us. We use it heavily for application integration and APIs, somewhat less for data integration, business to business communication, and we are trialing microservices. Although we do not yet heavily use the microservices feature, we do like that it provides it.

We plan to expand our usage of microservices because, in the AWS world, we want to make things auto-scalable. This is what we are playing around with and although we do not yet have it in production, the plan is to use it more.

Modifying and redeploying integrations is easy to do. This has made us more agile and the fact that we can churn things quicker has helped the business.

There are a few things about this product that we definitely like. It is very robust. If you build it nicely, you can't go wrong with it. It's rock solid.

The development is very fast. If you know what you're doing, you can develop something very easily and very fast.

For the latest services, the product is lacking in terms of connectors. For example, there are a lot of SaaS providers and if you look for the connectors out-of-the-box, they are definitely not going to be there. They have a lot of traditional options but they are basic. If you have an advanced use case then you are better to build your own.

For the most part, this solution supports the latest standards and makes it possible to plug in modern tooling and third-party products for automation and innovation. However, there are some things that it doesn't support and we find ourselves having to wait for a newer version. For example, when we were using version 9.10, it did not support OAuth.

In general, I would like to see the vendor release newer features sooner. Or, it would be helpful if we can use a newer feature but don't have to upgrade the entire product.

The UI for the admin console is very old. It hasn't been updated for years and is pretty much the same one that we started with. This is something that could be refreshed and made more modern.

We have been using the webMethods Integration Server for almost six years.

I would rate the stability very high. Once it is running, it's very stable.

The webMethods Integration Server is a tier-one application and if it's down, impacts pretty much everything. When it runs, no one knows about it but if it goes down, everyone screams. It is very crucial.

With our current licensing, it's very easy for us to scale. With our older licensing model, it was very hard. This is definitely something that I would highlight. I'm very happy with our current setup because we can scale and it's more of a constraint of your commercials rather than a product constraint when it comes to scalability.

We purchased a premium support package but to this point, we have not greatly depended upon it. In our day-to-day business, we haven't had to deal with them very often, which is a good thing. We generally resolve things within our team and don't generally need to rely on others. There are only a few issues that we have contacted technical support about, such as when we were having issues with the upgrade. Also, if there is something that we can't find then we will contact them.

In general, when I compare their support with other vendors, I would not rate them high. The customer experience with support is an area that needs improvement. The reason I say this is that regardless of the issue you raise, even if it is not necessary, they ask a lot of questions.  

Prior to webMethods, we were not using an integration solution. We were a .NET shop and we were using it to accomplish the same tasks. However, it was not to the full extent that webMethods is doing because its capabilities are less.

The reason we adopted webMethods is that a new project was coming and when we estimated the cost, we found that developing everything in .NET was cumbersome. At that point, we started to look for a tool and settled on webMethods.

We chose webMethods over MuleSoft because of how quick and easy it is for developing. It is simple and easy to use. The commercials is definitely another reason that we chose it. This was the product that was recommended after the technical evaluation was complete.

We also use webMethods.io, although that does not fall under Integration Server.

The initial setup is of medium complexity, although it depends on your scenario. If you have a simple use case to just integrate, it's easy. The actual installation is very straightforward but we had some complexity because of the zones.

We had multiple DMZ zones and we have a PCI zone. This meant that there were a lot of firewall rules that needed to be created. It was a greenfield project, so we had to build everything in addition to the webMethods aspect. The project was definitely complex. However, the webMethods setup in isolation was very straightforward. If you just focused on, "Okay, this is the one that you have to install." It's straightforward. If you know what you're doing, it's easy.

Upgrading is something that we can't do in a very fast manner. It's not like we are going to upgrade every six months. We have to wait a while. On the other hand, that's where the microservices architecture is good because anytime something new is released, we can upgrade to the latest.

We completed the initial setup in-house.

We evaluated MuleSoft and webMethods. There may have been others but these were the top choices. When we asked for demonstrations, these were the products that we looked at.

This product provides us with a single hybrid-integration platform for all of our integration needs. We do have another product but it is for a very specific use case, and it is separate because of the licensing. Otherwise, webMethods is our go-to for integration.

On the topic of development time, this product can save you time but it depends on what you're comparing it to. For example, if you are comparing it to having no platform, where all of the integrations have to be developed from scratch, then this product will definitely save you a lot of time. The undertaking would be massive. If instead, you are comparing it to another product such as MultSoft, then it will be a different answer. It is tricky to estimate because it depends on the tool.

This is a product that the vendor keeps adding things to. Sometimes, we have to wait until the next version comes out before there is support for what we want to do, but there hasn't been anything major.

My advice for anyone who is implementing this solution is to spend some time thinking about how it will be used. I have seen instances where the product was being used and didn't work properly. If it is designed nicely then it will work wonders, so spend some time thinking about the design and how it will be used and it's never going to have any issues.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The API Gateway and 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 SaaS integration etc.

API Gateways and API Management in general first and foremost standardizes and democratizes the Integration problem across all IT domains. API Gateway specifically allows for centralizing all integration interfaces to a simple style and normalizes the patterns of security, access control, cross-domain compatibility across the enterprise. API Gateways also enable enterprise integration across various public cloud infrastructure and enable Hybrid nature of Enterprise IT.

On the API gateway, I would say the runtime metrics that the gateway collects are definitely useful.

The product provides a lot of insights into the operations of the API itself at runtime.

The cloud version of the solution is very easy to set up.

The stability has been good. The performance is strong.

The scalability is excellent overall.

We have found the technical support to be very helpful and responsive when we have questions.

In terms of improvements, maybe on the API monetization side, having users able to create separate API consumption plans and to be able to throttle API execution against those consumption plans at run time could be better. Those are abilities that might need some improvement.

The on-premises setup can get a little complex, needs to be more simplified.

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

The stability and performance are excellent. 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. We find it to be reliable.

We have found that the solution scales quite well.

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 create tickets with the portal on Software AG through Software AG's support portal. They respond within 24 hours usually, and try to resolve the issue quickly. 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. 

They have a pretty good response time and offer quality service. We're pretty satisfied with the level of support.

In terms of setting up the solution, the solution offers both cloud and on-premises options. The on-premise license and setup can be done yourself. That can be a little complex depending on what is the overall deployment architecture that is needed. 

However, 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.

Typically, while the on-premises setup is somewhat 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. 

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 can fluctuate. I don't have the numbers on hand, however, I can say that they're somewhere in the middle in terms of pricing. They aren't the most expensive or the cheapest. 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 a consultant. I work with a consulting company. 

I'm familiar with API Gateway, API Portal, and Active Transfer.

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, kind of like creating an API management layer, and integration, a hybrid integration layer. 

Both go together, especially in data integration, or in application integration and cloud application integration.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

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.

We use it for everything. Three years or four years ago our company was bought. In our original company we used it for EDI, although that has pretty much gone away since the purchase. We do use it for EDI, but we use it for more free EAI, enterprise application integration. It allows us to have plant software talk to SAP. It allows us to interface with external parties through their MFT (managed file transfer) product called Active Transfer. We use it to connect all kinds of systems.

Also, in a company that's big, there are always acquisitions, and before the acquisition can be fully integrated there is always the challenge of getting data in and out of that acquisition. We use webMethods for that too, because we can either use internal network or external network.

It's hosted in Azure, on VMs.

Its adapters and connectors absolutely provide the fastest way to build an integration. An example of the effect of that speed of integration on our business is that when our company was acquired, the acquiring company didn't have webMethods and wasn't interested in it. We were able to build interfaces quickly and show that they didn't need constant babysitting. For example, you can build frameworks. We had built an error-handling framework that can notify people with meaningful error messages when they happen. It never crashes. It always tells people what happened. We were able to build solutions much faster than with the other tools.

Process orchestration is another benefit. Driving towards an event-driven architecture, and not a batch-oriented architecture—which introduces all kinds of time delays and doesn't give a true picture of the end-to-end process—we've used webMethods Designer to design process models that can orchestrate a process from beginning to end. For example, we can get data via SFTP, trigger an event in webMethods to process the data, and load it into a third-party data warehouse database such as Snowflake, which is a new up-and-comer. We can then trigger other processes to move that data and process it in Snowflake. We get responses back and, at the end, we can consume the processed data and send it to a different endpoint. All of that is orchestrated by webMethods. Process orchestration is a very strong point of the solution.

Modifying and troubleshooting are very easy. They have a nice debugging app interface. It's faster than anything else that we've ever used. For example, when we were acquired, we had to keep our legacy SAP system, which was still functioning for the legacy company, synchronized with the acquiring company's SAP system. This was a very complicated task and we were able to do it very quickly using webMethods Integration Server.

We use Active Transfer quite a bit. It's very convenient because it is integrated with Integration Server. That means you can deploy an event-driven architecture, based on SFTP, which most people can't pull off. Most of the time, with SFTP, there is file polling and it's not an event-driven architecture. But webMethods' solution allows you to plug into their integration server and have a totally end-to-end event-driven architecture.

The comprehensiveness and depth of Integration Servers' connectors to packaged apps and custom apps is unlimited. They have a connector for everything. If they don't, you can build it yourself. Or oftentimes, if there is value for other customers as well, you can talk with webMethods about creating a new adapter for you. That's particularly true of their cloud-based webMethods.io and their hybrid cloud solution. It's an on-prem plugin called CloudStreams. That allows you to connect your on-prem services with cloud-based things. The number-one example that everyone always gets is Salesforce.

That depth of comprehensiveness is similarly true for the solution’s connectors to SaaS apps, IoT devices, and legacy applications. That is the number-one strong point of webMethods. It can connect to anything. There are so many out-of-the-box connectors for SaaS things. There are JDBC adapters, SAP adapters. They have pretty much unlimited connectivity, or you can build it through their toolkits.

It provides a single hybrid-integration platform for all our needs.

Deploying is something we have found to be lacking with native webMethods tools, as is the ability to plug into a change management system, so we built our own deployment system. But again, we built it with webMethods' foundation tools and then interfaced with sub-version, version control, and our own home-built change management system. We used it to enforce that things can't go to prod unless they pass the QA stage and have had successful QA acceptance testing.

It would be nice if they had a change management system offering. We built our own deployer application because the one built into webMethods couldn't enforce change management rules. Integration into a change management system, along with the version control system, would be a good offering; it's something that they're lacking.

I've been using webMethods Integration Server for 20 years.

Overall, it's very incredibly stable. I've never seen any other software platform that can run for so long without crashing. We've had servers run for over a year, and we have restarted them not because they were broken but because we were installing something. We've had servers run for over a year.

In terms of support for the solution’s adapters and connectors and long-term stability for your services or integrations, you build once and forget it. 

Scalability is another strong point. It's very scalable. It's very easy to stand up parallel machines, and add them to a cluster. We have two machine clusters because another strong point is that we've built everything in high-availability. We have two of everything; everything is clustered. But if we all of a sudden acquired 50 more companies, and had all kinds of additional business, we would just stand up a couple of more servers in the cluster, they would inherit the same exact code, and it would be simple very simple to scale.

It's used for all our North America integrations. It runs the gamut of a little bit of EDI, a lot of EAI, and some MFT. Anything where one system needs to talk to another system, and trade data, we use WebMethods for that.

We are always building new things in it. There are always new projects. 

We don't need a lot of vendor support. You get the platform and you get some people that know how to use it and you really don't need much support from the vendor. However, when we do need support, they do have a good support portal and we do get support from their personnel pretty quickly. Our experience with their support has been good, for the most part. Once in a while we get people who aren't quite as good. I would rate it at eight out of 10.

We did not have a previous solution.

When it comes to upgrades, 20 years ago, it was very hard. Ten years ago, it was hard. Today, it's fairly straightforward. They've gotten much better at their upgrades.

As for how long an upgrade takes, there are many factors involved. We had a struggle with our infrastructure team just getting us the vanilla boxes and Azure. Once you have your boxes in a network so that they can talk to each other, the installation of WebMethods is fairly simple. 

Then there comes the complexity of importing your old code into it. And the hardest task of all is testing everything to make sure it still works. But the upgrades are pretty simple, they have apps that help out with that, and they work pretty well.

The upgrade we're doing right now has four people involved. I am the architect, and the other roles are developer/testers.

Day-to-day maintenance is almost zero. If there is a need for some maintenance, we have two people, me and another, who take care of system maintenance. But really, it's stand-it-up-and-forget-it. You do have to do certain things. webMethods is not in charge of your user databases. So if they fill up with data, and you haven't built in something to automatically purge them every so often, that's on you, not on webMethods. But as long as you have built in these types of maintenance routines, and schedule them, everything is pretty trouble-free.

I wish our company measured ROI. We're slowly getting there. 

But webMethods Integration Server just saves time, especially development time. We can implement solutions that save repetitive user-time, often. Often, if a group comes to us and says, "Fred is spending two hours a day doing this stupid task where he's just uploading into a spreadsheet, and downloading here; can you help?" We can turn that type of thing around so fast, and eliminate Fred's two hours per day.

Pricing is the number-one downfall. It's too expensive. They could make more money by dropping the price in half and getting more customers. It's the best product there is, but it's too expensive. It could be 10 out of 10 if they dropped the price. There are so many people who don't use it because it's so expensive.

It also provides application integration, data integration, business-to-business communications, APIs, and microservices. That range of features is very important because we can do anything with it. We tried Informatica, for example, which was portrayed as being an equal, and it wasn't. It can't do everything and then you have to go out to other products and combine them. webMethods can truly do everything within the webMethods environment. And you don't have to buy add-on products. In reality, a lot of the webMethods' plugins are add-on products that were acquired at some point. But they do pretty well when it comes to integrating their acquisitions into the main ecosystem.

The scope of abilities in Informatica is very limited. The scope of abilities for webMethods is pretty much unlimited.

We have also looked at SnapLogic, and again, it just doesn't have the breadth of abilities that webMethods does.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using it is to never build a one-off. Always think "reusability." Everything in webMethods is reusable. Even if you think you will never use it again, and you build it hastily, without error-handling, you will get burned. Always build for reusability.

You should definitely build a couple of little reusable frameworks too. The first reusable framework I would build would be an error-handling framework. Once you build that, you add those service calls to every service you ever build. In that way, once things error, you always know. It knows how to send an email to the right people, it knows how to send a meaningful error message that someone can read and see what happened. Building a meaningful error-handling framework upfront will save you so much time when things break and people ask "How do we fix it?" It will also proactively let people know things errored out, instead of reactively. We also built a deployment framework. That's a little above and beyond. The webMethods' tools are not terrible in that regard, it just doesn't talk to a change management system.

Everything you build in webMethods is a microservice. It's been that way for 20 years. So even though the term wasn't coined back then, you can expose any service in webMethods to any other system you choose. Call it an API, call it a microservice, but it's all just built-in and it's already there.

They are focusing on their cloud offerings, as is everybody else, because everyone wants to go that way. Sometimes it's just for the sake of saying, "I have a cloud offering," but theirs seems to be pretty solid. Their cloud offering is webMethods.io. However, I haven't used that extensively. That'll be coming up this year. There is also a hybrid thing called CloudStreams and that is for on-prem webMethods, which is what we have, but it has canned connectors to SaaS solutions like Salesforce, whereas webMethods.io is entirely in the cloud. You would use that to connect one SaaS to another SaaS.

In terms of the solution's support for the latest standards making it possible to plug into modern tooling and third-party products, we've found no need. It's a pretty complete solution, unlike other solutions. And you really don't need to plug anything else into it.

By Software AG, we are also using Integration Server, Trading Networks, Active Transfer, Optimize for Infrastructure, My webMethods, and their EDI package. As long as there is product parity between products, it makes sense to continue using multiple products from the same vendor. Obviously, you want to make sure you have a diverse portfolio. Where those products start breaking those links, you want to make sure that you are using the best product for your company in this region.

The fact that we were already using another solution from this vendor affected our decision to go with this particular product, mainly from a cost standpoint. As is any product in this region, the biggest cost is almost always the upfront cost of laying out the solution. Also, there are some costs in having that solution already available: between knowledge of the platform, having the licensing rights, and if you bring in a new solution, then you are now paying for two solutions.

The native integrations between the vendors' products are very seamless. The products interact very well. At times, it's kind of hard to tell where one product ends and the next one starts. As new products come in, the integrations probably take one or two updates before they are fully integrated. However, once products are fully integrated, it is very seamless and easy to hop between one product to another.

Using multiple products from the same vendor creates efficiencies:

1. In terms of knowledge. Obviously, there is a familiarity with the product and how you expect Software AG's products to act and respond. 
2. In terms of operational understanding between end users who are looking for specific data. They know how these products work and how to pull up these reports. 
3. In terms of having administrators overseeing these products.

There is a cost savings for using many of the same products. There are lower training costs. Also, typically, there are a lot of integrations that you ended up needing to build out, whether they be custom or out-of-the-box. Even if they are out-of-the-box, a lot of times that takes a lot of work to get those to work. However, since we are using Software AG products, it's very much like installing a plugin into an Excel program.

There was a reduction in the learning curve because we had already used the vendors' products. The products used work very similarly. In terms of verbiage, key aspects, or three-letter acronyms, you don't have to relearn any of those. There is an expectation of how these products will work. These products always work the same way when Software AG is rolling these types of products out.

We use webMethods Integration Server for two main aspects: 

1. For application-to-application integrations.
2. B2B: The transferring of on-premise data out to other business partners.

As with any integration platform, it is a single pane of glass that allows you to see and interact with transactions as they are flowing. Out-of-the-box, Software AG offers robust monitoring solutions to help you understand if a solution's up or down transactions aren't working, etc. The tool has been invaluable to our organization in terms of understanding where our data is, how it's flowing, and its current status.

Having a single hybrid-integration platform for all our needs is very important. From an IT perspective, it is a way for us to easily troubleshoot and quickly resolve issues. From a business perspective, it's very important because IT is readily available to assist with any system issues which are happening at that time. Anytime that you have applications talking to each other, it is a breeding ground for problems and issues. Having a solution like webMethods Integration Server in place can empower your IT department to be able to resolve issues and roll out solutions quickly as new applications come into your portfolio.

We have been on webMethods Integration Server for 15 years. We just got rid of our mainframe. It works wonders with our mainframe. With SaaS and cloud applications, webMethods Integration Server does not answer this need by itself. This is where you would be looking for APIs or custom plugins to work with those types of solutions. 

It is very open. It is extremely rare for us to find something that we are trying to integrate, but we can't integrate it. In the past seven years, I don't think that has ever happened. For any problem that we are looking at, the Software AG solution can solve. That has probably been the most valuable feature.

Application integrations are offered out-of-the-box, and that is extremely important to us. This is one of the main use cases that we have for it. It is about 60 to 70 percent of the workload in our application today.

Integration platform as a service (iPaaS) is probably the future and direction that many companies and organizations are looking at. Software AG is also rolling out robust solutions for this. So, if I was a brand new customer, that is where I would be looking. This is also the direction that I think Software AG is moving into along with almost every vendor in the industry. However, the integration platform, as it currently sits, runs really well. It's very robust and does what you would expect it to do.

My organization moved onto the webMethods platform 15 years ago. I have been using it for the past seven years.

Software AG is a partner who has been around for many years. The company is not going anywhere. Regarding the solution, you can get the capabilities that you need out of it.  It is a known solution that works really well and does exactly what you would expect it to do.

Software AG's full support for the solution’s adapters and connectors brings long-term stability to our services and integrations. Software AG has many SMEs in each region, both globally and in each product type. Being able to have access to a subject-matter expert in the specific tool or region that I'm looking for is invaluable. I feel like I am talking to someone who has hands-on experience in either developing the solution or has many years of experience with the product or similar customers. They also have people who just work in specific business groups. For example, if I'm looking for a knowledge worker to do something with IoT, then they have people ready who can answer specific questions about products that we might be looking to integrate with.

The solution is very scalable. If you want more webMethod Integration Servers, it is very easy to spin them up. It's very easy to apply packages to each one of those solutions. Or, if you want to just have one large webMethods Integration Server, it is easy to create the configuration settings to allow that JVM to have more memory.

There are less than 20 users. A solution like this is normally a back-end solution. Obviously, we have administrators who are overseeing the product to make sure it's up, patched, available, and secure. Developers who are rolling out new solutions and debugging any issues going on in production or lower environments. Then, the third group is probably the business users. That is a very small hand full of users at our company. Those users are typically looking just to make sure that the data is flowing as they would expect. For example, I expect a certain file to go out to this customer every day. That business user has access to log into the application and pull that file.

The product is used extensively at my organization. Out of all our integrations, it probably counts for 60 to 70 percent. Every minute of every day, it's being used. I think the usage that we have in place today is correct. If we were to expand any further, we would probably be looking at iPaaS solutions.

Their technical support is very good. I have never had any issues with the support or getting the resources that I need.

Two months ago, Software AG did have a data breach, so their support desk got shut down. It has been down since then, and that has not been a pleasant experience. Prior to that, it was a pleasant experience. I think Software AG has been reeling from that, but there are ways to get a hold of their support desk. This ensures that their customers still have access to support, which has been available and out there. However, they did have a public exposure, which has ended up causing some loopholes for their customers.

Upgrades are complex. They typically take about five months from start to finish. There are many packages that plug into webMethods Integration Server, which is the central point for a vast majority of the transactions at my organization. Anytime we are upgrading that, there are complexities within each component that we must understand. That makes any upgrade very cumbersome and complicated. That has been my experience at this company. Because there are many different business units that we are touching, there are so many different components that we are touching. The amount of READMEs that you have to go through takes some time.

This is where we would need to look at an iPaaS solution or moving to work with microservices solutions. Obviously, the smaller you make the solution, the more you're able to in an agile fashion.

From a high-level implementation strategy, we do a waterfall approach. That is the approach that we have ended up following for upgrading this solution.

Deploying solutions is very easy. The biggest thing that any company has to look at, because we have had a couple of pitfalls in this, is you have to look at how you're rolling your solution out. So, if you end up stacking or creating common services in the solution, those solutions become very tricky as they start to age, as any development cycle would end up having. The smaller you create the solution, the easier it is to keep rolling out those solutions, and staying away from common services really allows you to continue to roll out with ease.

As new solutions roll out or there is a different way for these apps to integrate, it has been fairly easy for developers to make the modified changes needed. The biggest thing is always knowledge because there have been some integrations that haven't been touched for 15 years. Then, if someone needs to touch one of those integrations, there is a learning curve in understanding how that integration works and what they are looking at.

Having a product like this is invaluable to any company in terms of the amount of time that IT gets to save in terms of integrating different products as well as having an open way to ensure that these applications are working. If you were to do this out of the box for each one of those solutions, while the upfront costs would be cheaper, the long-term stability of your applications would definitely degrade. As you are rolling this out for products that probably run your business, that's probably not a direction that any long-term company would want to go. I know my organization has seen time savings from not going with in-house built integrations from app to app.

For the B2B, we are probably saving somewhere between five to 10 full-time resources who would be working on this manually. For application-to-application, it probably has cut down 50 percent of our downtimes at a minimum. When you're talking about application-to-application integration, that is the thing that you would probably end up using as a key metric. For the amount of downtime that we have, I would double the amount or length of downtime that we would have if we didn't have this solution.

Currently, the licensing solution for this product is pretty straightforward. The way that Software AG has moved in their licensing agreements is very understandable. It is very easy for you to see where things land. Like most vendors today, they are transaction based. Therefore, just having a good understanding of how many transactions that you are doing a year would be very wise. Luckily, there are opportunities to work with the vendor to get a good understanding of how many transactions you have and what is the right limit for you to fall under.

With any solution like this, on day one you have a project that you're trying to work on, but just understand where you are trying to go with the solution. Some plugins are cheaper than others, and others are more expensive than others. Just make sure that you understand the full scope of what you might end up using the product for, so you can understand the all-in costs.

The tool works extremely well. Software AG offers packaged solutions for many packaged apps. Oracle SQL Server or Salesforce are add-ons that you can purchase and install easily for plug and play with packaged solutions. When you start moving into custom applications, there are no packaged solutions. The good news is that typically custom apps are built in some type of known technology, and that technology can easily be integrated into webMethods Integration Servers.

Business-to-business communications is an add-on that needs to be purchased. While super important to my organization, it is an add-on outside of the standard webMethods Integration Server. I would strongly recommend the business-to-business add-ons, especially if you're looking to use webMethods Integration Server in that capacity. It just makes the development cycles a lot shorter as well as making it much easier to manage your business profiles.

We routinely evaluate other options. I wasn't here when we made the decision to move onto this solution, but we periodically reassessed the platform to see if we are still sitting on the best solution that is matched to our corporation.

Today, there are many newer solutions out in the marketplace, and Software AG does offer those solutions. That is a great start. If I was starting over, I might look at those alternative solutions. However, if you are an alternative solution to webMethods Integration Server (not Software AG), then I would probably be looking a lot more into the cloud. webMethods Integration Server is used in a very legacy way. For example, we are on premise with data centers, which are legacy ways to solve a problem. If my solutions were in the cloud, then I would probably be looking at webMethods Integration Cloud as Software AG offers it, or any of the other vendors, like MuleSoft. So, you have to look at:

• What am I trying to integrate today? 
• Where are those solutions sitting? 
• If everything is on-prem and you are a 110-year-old company with 50 plants across the place, then probably having an on-prem is the right solution.
• If you are an eCommerce shop, then you are probably looking more in the cloud and for a cloud solution.

The solution pays for itself, but it is complicated as it stands today. Make sure that you are using it for exactly what you have architected it for. Don't try to fit a square peg into a round hole.

We have been moving away from data integration for webMethods Integration Server. So, it's becoming less of a priority for us.

Software AG has been moving in the direction of trying to make their tool as modern as possible. It has plugins for Docker today as well as ways to integrate into webMethods Integration Cloud. While these integrations are available, we don't use them.

I would rate webMethods Integration Server as a seven (out of 10). For what the solution can do, it does it extremely well. The upgrades are very cumbersome; they are very long and disruptive. You have to do them at least every three years. It's not a fun time for any company. If upgrades were a 100 times easier, it would get a much higher score.

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.

We use the solution in the API gateway services. 

I like the tool's scalability. 

webMethods.io Integration's installation is complex. It should also improve integration and connectors. 

I have been working with the solution for more than ten years. 

The tool's support is good. 

Positive

I have used Apigee before webMethods.io Integration. 

The installation took about four to six weeks to complete. You don't need a big team to handle the deployment. We relied on one system architect to handle it. The tool's maintenance is also not difficult. 

webMethods.io Integration's pricing is high and has yearly subscription costs.  

This solution suits enterprises and I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use the solution for logistic purposes.

The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to integrate with various servers.

The solution could be more user-friendly. They should include proper documentation for easy understanding.

We have ten solution users in our company. It has good scalability. We plan to increase its usage.

The solution's customer service is good. We have support access. Thus, we write to them for the service request in case of any issues.

The complexity of the solution's initial setup process depends on the environment and specific project requirements.

We purchase a yearly basis license for the solution. I rate its pricing an eight. It is not that expensive. The price depends on the use cases, support, and resources for implementation.

It is a good solution. Also, it is easy to use compared to other integration solutions like Azure, SAP, etc. It has the highest resolution and is more secure as well. I rate it a nine.