By Rashmi Kaushik | Director, Product Management, Integration Portfolio
We are excited to announce that Gartner has recognized IBM as a Leader in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for API Management. Gartner assessed 17 API management solution vendors and evaluated them on their Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. This is the ninth time that IBM has been named a Leader in this report.
What to look for when shopping for API Management Software
Almost every organization relies on APIs as the backbone of their digital ecosystem to connect their applications, systems, and data. A robust API strategy, paired with the right API management solution, is critical to ensuring agile and scalable operations. As part of the analysis of API management vendors, they released The Critical Capabilities for API Management report that complements the Magic Quadrant report and provides deeper insight into providers’ offerings by focusing on six key Use Cases within API management.
IBM ranked #1 in 4 out of 6 Use Cases
Gartner evaluated 17 API management solution vendors and weighted the capabilities of their products across these six key Use Cases:
1. Mobile/Web Backend APIs
2. Integration Using APIs
3. Internal API Management
4. Productizing APIs
5. Distributed API Management
6. AI Enablement
IBM has the highest Use Case score in four out of the six Use Cases, and is positioned among the five hightest ranked vendors in the Internal API Management and Distributed API Mangement Use Cases. The report highlights IBM’s deplyment flexibility, GraphQL support, API security, design, testing, and more.
The future of API Management at IBM
We announced on July 1 that IBM completed its acquisition of webMethods from Software AG. You’ll notice that webMethods is evaluated separately from IBM in the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities reports since the acquisition occurred after the research cutoff date. In the six consecutive years prior to 2024, Software AG was named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for API Management. In 2024, it was ranked among the 5 highest ranked vendors in 5 out of the 6 Use Cases.
With the acquisition, IBM’s intent is to leverage the expertise and best-in-class capabilities of API Connect and webMethods, along with our market-leading position in responsible AI, powered by watsonx, to provide innovative and robust enterprise integration solutions to our customers. If you would like to stay informed of the latest news regarding IBM and webMethods, you can sign up to receive updates.