apim
2020/08/05
 
5 Aug, 2020 | 3 min read

The Results Are in: WSO2 Named a Leader in the “API Management Solutions, Q3 2020” Report

  • sanjeewa malalgoda
  • software engineer - WSO2

The WSO2 API Manager team is happy to announce that WSO2 has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: API Management Solutions, Q3 2020 report1. You can download the report here.

The new report2 examines the “15 providers that matter most” along 26 evaluation criteria. WSO2 and the other 14 companies were included because they had a prominent presence as API management vendors and met Forrester’s requirements for an API management solution that was complete and standalone.

For those of us on the WSO2 API Manager team, the report process started a few months ago when we answered a detailed questionnaire covering all the areas related to API management, explaining how our product supported a range of categories. We also provided our insights about our vision for the future of API management and our plans to cater to future demands. After we submitted our response, we provided a demo explaining our product capabilities and how they met real-world API management use cases and requirements.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank those who worked on the questionnaire and demo. Also, we must thank all our internal teams, customers, developer communities, partners, and everyone else with us throughout this journey. And big thanks go to the Forrester team for structuring a thorough analysis covering all of the aspects related to an API management solution. Additionally, we congratulate all of the vendors who participated in this evaluation.

Our Report Highlights About WSO2 API Manager

WSO2 API Manager is well known for its free and open-source nature. The product also comes with multiple extension points that allow users to customize the product to suit their requirements without changing the core product. Most of our customers and community users enjoy this flexibility and make maximum use out of that. The following are some of the highlights from the report about WSO2 API Manager’s flexibility and other capabilities.

The report3 notes that, “The fully open-source nature of the product adds an additional layer of flexibility, should customers need it, in addition to offering a free-forever path to getting started with API management through open source self-support.

Over the last year, the WSO2 API Manager team spent significant time on innovation and research. As a result, we were able to include many new features and support new protocols, standards, such as GraphQL, WebSocket, and gRPC on top of the REST/SOAP API support we already offered. Moreover, we looked at how API management coexisted with service mesh and designed and developed components around that. Notably, we released API Manager Istio integration to address some of the API management requirements in service mesh environments. We also invested heavily in completely revamping our user interfaces.

The report4 mentioned some of our newer developments: “Notable features include GraphQL publishing support, deep microservice platform integration, good API product packaging, and full application integration features in WSO2’s Enterprise Integrator product.”

The report5 went on to say, “Key future product priorities include REST API design, more investment in microservices and non-REST APIs, deeper service mesh integration, CI-CD enhancements, and API ecosystems and product management.”

Our WSO2 API Management solution goes beyond targeting just API design and development. Today most organizations have legacy services and APIs they started many years back. When we plan for a modern API-driven service layer, we cannot completely forget them. So integration capabilities. including brownfield integration, are important when taking the next step with what you already have. At the same time, API management products should support most modern microservice-driven service implementations as well. Our team equally understands and caters to both of these requirements.

The report6 notes that, “The solution particularly well suits buyers with strategies that combine integration, APIs, and microservices with a desire for the benefits of open source.”

A Look at WSO2 API Manager

WSO2 API Manager is a full lifecycle API management solution. It supports API design, development, management/governance, and API behavior analysis capabilities. Different users, including API designers, developers, API product managers, API consumers, and partners can reap the benefits of this platform.

Figure 1: How WSO2 API Manager Helps Organizations to Implement an Integrated Supply Chain for APIs

WSO2 API Manager can be deployed on-premises, on a private cloud, as a service in the cloud, or in a hybrid fashion where components can be distributed and deployed across multiple clouds and on-prem infrastructures.

It features a cloud-native API gateway and provides a Kubernetes operator for easily converting raw microservices into managed APIs. API Manager integrates with service meshes and offers a full-fledged management plane and control plane for managing, monitoring, and monetizing APIs and API products.

Figure 2: Different Components and Interconnectivity of the Combined WSO2 API Management Solution

WSO2 is now the world’s 6th largest open-source software company. Our size and staff (600+) allow us to run a 24/7 operation with a global reach. We have sold and delivered into 60+ different countries with offices in California, New York, London, Berlin, Sydney, Sao Paolo, and Colombo. We have 133 partners worldwide to cater to different markets with a local presence. Last year alone we had 17 worldwide summits with partners with over 2,500 attendees.

Figure 3: How WSO2 Delivers Solutions to Our Customers via Our Global Offices and Partner Network

The product investments we’ve made to help our customers in different industry verticals, such as banking, healthcare, finance, and retail, among others, have contributed heavily to this

growth over the last few years. Now WSO2 delivers mission-critical solutions across a range of industry sectors.

Figure 4: WSO2 Customers Across Key Industry Verticals

Vision for the Future

As a leader in the API management domain, we continue to invest our time and resources to analyze trends to predict the opportunities and demands of the future. Based on the different observations and feedback we get from our customers and community, we design and adjust our road maps from time to time. Currently, we plan to invest more in WebSockets and GraphQL as we see a growing use of those technologies in modern application development. Also, with the popularity of service mesh solutions for managing large microservices deployments, we will continue to put more effort into Istio-related work.

Figure 5: Our Near-Term and Mid-Term Future Plans

Are you keen on getting started with the API management platform that is recognized as a Leader7 by Forrester Research, Inc.? Here are some links that will help you:

Got any questions, or would you like to get in touch? Reach us via https://wso2.com/contact/.

1 -7Forrester Research, Inc. “The Forrester Wave™: API Management Solutions, Q3 2020,” by Randy Heffner with Christopher Mines, Abigail Livingston, and Kara Hartig, August 4, 2020.

Undefined