Azure Application Gateway vs. IBM Cloud Functions

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Application Gateway
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure Application Gateway is a platform-managed, scalable, and highly available application delivery controller as a service with integrated web application firewall.N/A
IBM Cloud Functions
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
IBM Cloud Functions is a PaaS platform based on Apache OpenWhisk. With it, developers write code (“actions”) that respond to external events. Actions are hosted, executed, and scaled on demand based on the number of events coming in. No servers or infrastructure to provision and manage.
$0
per second of execution
Pricing
Azure Application GatewayIBM Cloud Functions
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Basic Cloud Functions Rate
$0.00017
per second of execution
API Gateway Rate
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Application GatewayIBM Cloud Functions
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Application GatewayIBM Cloud Functions
Best Alternatives
Azure Application GatewayIBM Cloud Functions
Small Businesses
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Score 8.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
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Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Application GatewayIBM Cloud Functions
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(8 ratings)
3.0
(7 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Application GatewayIBM Cloud Functions
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
For building scalable and highly available applications, Azure Application Gateway does most of the job on behalf of you; automatically load-balancing traffic from a number of users to a number of back-end servers. This ensure scalability and availability. The in-built security is great as can be expected from Microsoft, and user has a variety of tools for monitoring the health of the load-balancing function as well as the health of back end servers behind it.
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IBM
IBM Cloud Functions [is] not the worse product on the IBM cloud. I decided to write this review as I thought it would be balanced. I would still use functions to set up a serverless architecture where execution time is pretty quick and the code is relatively simple. I wouldn't use IBM Cloud Functions for async calls obviously, as costs could be higher. The functions documentation is lacking in terms of CI/CD, and there are unexplainable errors occurring - like the network connection that I mentioned. So I wouldn't just rely on IBM Cloud Functions too much for the entire system, but make sure it's diversified.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Easy integration with Load Balancer and Azure Scale Set to provide a full solution for traffic management.
  • With rich routing rule, we could use one Application Gateway as the central point for all internal applications to expose to the external network.
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IBM
  • Great substitute for a simple API calls to run non-complicated code.
  • Easy way to run Python/Java/Javascript to get something done.
  • File validation.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • More cost-effective pricing plans are welcome for the future, especially for WAF
  • Ability to automate the TLS certificate renewal procedure
  • Ability to manage non-HTTP traffic
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IBM
  • Billing can be a hassle, not the most responsive customer service/support team
  • Handles & executes most functionalities, but other platforms offer more scalability if you're seeking consistent and stable growth
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Usability
Microsoft
Most of the Application Gateway's features and services can be managed and re-configured via either the Azure Portal GUI or via the Azure Cloud Shell, thus allowing both CLI modes, i.e. Azure CLI (Bash) and Azure Powershell. The v2 version of Application Gateway has significantly improved performance during initial configuration or during re-configuration changes, thus making it much more usable for IT admins, as compared to v1.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Microsoft
I don’t like that it's part of the Microsoft brand. In general, I am not a fan of Microsoft products but Azure gets it right.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Other load balancing tools in Azure (Azure LB and Azure Traffic Manager) are limited in their functionality in comparison with the Azure Application Gateway, and also, they don't provide security features. Azure Firewall, although it has security features, is more expensive, and most importantly, it's not a load balancer at all.
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IBM
  • ICF is a lightweight service and does not require runtime configurations
  • Scalable on demand and hence there is no need to pay for runtime costs
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Positive : Improved performance and scalability
  • Positive : Better and enhanced Security
  • Positive : Efficiency
  • Negative: Cost
  • Negative: More resources to manage.
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IBM
  • It directly affected our expenses since we do not need to deploy and maintain a set of separate applications.
  • It allowed us to pay for only the amount of time cloud functions run.
  • It saved on maintenance and monitoring of the applications it replaced.
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ScreenShots