AWS Lambda vs. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS Lambda
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
AWS Lambda is a serverless computing platform that lets users run code without provisioning or managing servers. With Lambda, users can run code for virtually any type of app or backend service—all with zero administration. It takes of requirements to run and scale code with high availability.
$NaN
Per 1 ms
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Score 7.9 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is a managed Kubernetes offering, delivering user tools and built-in security for rapid delivery of applications that users can bind to cloud services related to IBM Watson®, IoT, DevOps and data analytics. As a certified K8s provider, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service provides intelligent scheduling, self-healing, horizontal scaling, service discovery and load balancing, automated rollouts and rollbacks, and secret and configuration management. The Kubernetes…N/A
Pricing
AWS LambdaIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Editions & Modules
128 MB
$0.0000000021
Per 1 ms
1024 MB
$0.0000000167
Per 1 ms
10240 MB
$0.0000001667
Per 1 ms
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS LambdaIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS LambdaIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Considered Both Products
AWS Lambda

No answer on this topic

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Chose IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
AWS Lambda may be more suitable for large companies that want to continuously access similar functions at a higher number / frequency, but for small teams with limited budgets, IBM Cloud Functions is a competitive choice.
Chose IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
I haven't made a decision, but before this workshop, it was a choice between AWS and GCE. Now I'm aware that IBM is a decent third option.
Features
AWS LambdaIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
8.8
7 Ratings
3% below category average
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
-
Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.67 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.13 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
5.0
6 Ratings
32% below category average
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
-
Ratings
Dashboards5.56 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports5.15 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports4.45 Ratings00 Ratings
Function as a Service (FaaS)
Comparison of Function as a Service (FaaS) features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
8.7
7 Ratings
0% above category average
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
-
Ratings
Programming Language Diversity9.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Runtime API Authoring8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Function/Database Integration8.97 Ratings00 Ratings
DevOps Stack Integration8.97 Ratings00 Ratings
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
AWS Lambda
-
Ratings
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
8.0
20 Ratings
2% below category average
Security and Isolation00 Ratings7.920 Ratings
Container Orchestration00 Ratings8.420 Ratings
Cluster Management00 Ratings7.720 Ratings
Storage Management00 Ratings7.920 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization00 Ratings8.120 Ratings
Discovery Tools00 Ratings7.719 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks00 Ratings7.820 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery00 Ratings8.318 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging00 Ratings8.220 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AWS LambdaIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Small Businesses
IBM Cloud Functions
IBM Cloud Functions
Score 6.9 out of 10
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AWS LambdaIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Likelihood to Recommend
7.7
(52 ratings)
7.8
(85 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(16 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(17 ratings)
8.7
(16 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(20 ratings)
7.7
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(15 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS LambdaIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Lambda excels at event-driven, short-lived tasks, such as processing files or building simple APIs. However, it's less ideal for long-running, computationally intensive, or applications that rely on carrying the state between jobs. Cold starts and constant load can easily balloon the costs.
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IBM
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service also stands out in environments where the workloads vary continuously and require befitting scale. The product excels particularly in microservices structures, wherein the companies would harness the capacity for container orchestration and automated scaling. Still, it may face the challenges due to monolith applications that have not been originally developed for using container technology.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • No provisioning required - we don't have to pay anything upfront
  • Serverless deployment - it gets executed only when request comes and we pay only for the time the request is getting executed
  • Integrates well with AWS CloudWatch triggers so it is easy to setup scheduled tasks like cron jobs
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IBM
  • IBM has a strong focus on serverless and Kubernetes. This shows in the platform. Deploying containers to Kubernetes was very easy.
  • Deploying a Kubernetes cluster through the GUI is very easy and quick. On top of that, IBM Cloud offers a single node cluster for Free.
  • Container Registry is a very good product for managing container images. Integration with Kubernetes was seemless.
  • Portability. To transition from Google Cloud Kubernetes to IBM Cloud Kubernetes took almost no effort. We mostly use the CLI and the standard tools such as kubectl were present.
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • Developing test cases for Lambda functions can be difficult. For functions that require some sort of input it can be tough to develop the proper payload and event for a test.
  • For the uninitiated, deploying functions with Infrastructure as Code tools can be a challenging undertaking.
  • Logging the output of a function feels disjointed from running the function in the console. A tighter integration with operational logging would be appreciated, perhaps being able to view function logs from the Lambda console instead of having to navigate over to CloudWatch.
  • Sometimes its difficult to determine the correct permissions needed for Lambda execution from other AWS services.
Read full review
IBM
  • I constantly get this error even when everything is well configured prefect.exceptions.AuthorizationError: [{'path': ['auth_info'], 'message': 'AuthenticationError: Forbidden', 'extensions': {'code': 'UNAUTHENTICATED'}}]
  • Then sometimes the error disapear without changine anything, happened twice to me. Should there be an issue with the authentication service? Please let's improve or let users know why this may be happening.
  • Improve the UX in the browse console when removing many images at once
  • UX on the process of installing KeyCloack operator
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
IBM
We have our application running on a CentOS compartment on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. We have been utilizing the help since IBM Cloud initially dispatched. We liked the adaptability and versatility that IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service give us. Since we are tiny, the Kubernetes administration is just utilized at present inside my venture bunch.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
I give it a seven is usability because it's AWS. Their UI's are always clunkier than the competition and their documentation is rather cumbersome. There's SO MUCH to dig through and it's a gamble if you actually end up finding the corresponding info if it will actually help. Like I said before, going to google with a specific problem is likely a better route because AWS is quite ubiquitous and chances are you're not the first to encounter the problem. That being said, using SAM (Serverless application model) and it's SAM Local environment makes running local instances of your Lambdas in dev environments painless and quite fun. Using Nodejs + Lambda + SAM Local + VS Code debugger = AWESOME.
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IBM
We actually haven't had any real problems in our clusters recently and the results we have gotten from adopting IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service have been beyond even our greatest expectations. The community has helped optimize the use of the system and make it relatively simpler to use.
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Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
IBM
IBM's cloud is almost infallible.
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Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
IBM
IBM's cloud has a site in my conuntry (MEXICO) so the network latency was almost 0
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
Amazon consistently provides comprehensive and easy-to-parse documentation of all AWS features and services. Most development team members find what they need with a quick internet search of the AWS documentation available online. If you need advanced support, though, you might need to engage an AWS engineer, and that could be an unexpected (or unwelcome) expense.
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IBM
The self-guided support was solid, and there are plenty of online videos to guide first time users, but I think one area of improvement is a faster way to transfer a large quantity of files from our local machine to the cloud for storage (Aspera)
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Online Training
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
IBM
Online training is really an important resource for using these tools. IBM's help center is rich in useful information and tips. Also, external guides and tutorials are available (e.g. on youtube), but I followed only IBM ones and I had no difficulties.
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Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
IBM
Ease of use. Very intuitive. We have been looking for a product that allows us to orchestrate our docker containers in a way where it allows us to effectively scale our applications to production. It also provides us a way of monitoring all our infrastructure in a very clear concise way.
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
AWS Lambda is good for short running functions, and ideally in response to events within AWS. Google App Engine is a more robust environment which can have complex code running for long periods of time, and across more than one instance of hardware. Google App Engine allows for both front-end and back-end infrastructure, while AWS Lambda is only for small back-end functions
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IBM
We mainly selected [IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service] because IBM fabric blockchain service is mostly compatible with it. To have all the infrastructure in a single cloud to get the best output we selected the [IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service].
Read full review
Scalability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
IBM
IBM's CKS does not offers automatic autoscaling nor vertical scaling (automatic). Other services like Google Kubernetes Engine scales up and down very well
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Positive - Only paying for when code is run, unlike virtual machines where you pay always regardless of processing power usage.
  • Positive - Scalability and accommodating larger amounts of demand is much cheaper. Instead of scaling up virtual machines and increasing the prices you pay for that, you are just increasing the number of times your lambda function is run.
  • Negative - Debugging/troubleshooting, and developing for lambda functions take a bit more time to get used to, and migrating code from virtual machines and normal processes to Lambda functions can take a bit of time.
Read full review
IBM
  • Increased development speed and agility allows to build features faster and more economically.
  • Improved resource utilization helps keep applications running very efficiently, which saves on cloud service expenses.
  • Scalability and resilience allows for scaling up or down based on demand, which keeps applications running efficiently and more economically.
Read full review
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