IBM Cloud Foundry vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cloud Foundry
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
IBM Cloud Foundry is an IBM version of the open-source platform designed for building, testing, deploying, and scaling applications. Enterprises can run Cloud Foundry in a public isolated environment, while natively integrating with other IBM Cloud services, such as AI, Blockchain, and IoT.
$0.07
Per GBH
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
$29
per month
Pricing
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
Community Runtimes
$0.07
Per GBH
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Considered Both Products
IBM Cloud Foundry
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
CF is what we initially went with to establish a development pipeline and start our cloud journey, now we are expanding this and although we are now pulling in many other tools and functions around CF, it is not being replaced. It stands out as having a key place working ‘with’ …
Microsoft Azure

No answer on this topic

Features
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloud Foundry
7.6
24 Ratings
3% below category average
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces7.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability8.524 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead8.512 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow engine capability8.020 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration7.523 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation7.722 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication6.49 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification4.711 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery7.520 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes7.522 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloud Foundry
-
Ratings
Microsoft Azure
8.4
28 Ratings
2% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.227 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.626 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.226 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.327 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.425 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings8.927 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings8.627 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.225 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Small Businesses
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.4 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(32 ratings)
8.7
(97 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(17 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(37 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(28 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
As it is an open-source platform as a service, it is very easy to operate, scale, and deploy regardless of what programming language and framework it's written in. However, it could be improved in terms of scalability. There should be proper documentation for easier and clearer understanding to make the process smooth.
Read full review
Microsoft
Azure is particularly well suited for enterprise environments with existing Microsoft investments, those that require robust compliance features, and organizations that need hybrid cloud capabilities that bridge on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In my opinion, Azure is less appropriate for cost-sensitive startups or small businesses without dedicated cloud expertise and scenarios requiring edge computing use cases with limited connectivity. Azure offers comprehensive solutions for most business needs but can feel like there is a higher learning curve than other cloud-based providers, depending on the product and use case.
Read full review
Pros
IBM
  • Simplicity - the command line tool provided can get you up and running within minutes.
  • Resourceful - IBM Cloud Foundry is built on top of the open source Cloud Foundry technology, so any resources you find online about Cloud Foundry generally can be applied.
  • Feature rich - provides all the necessary features for a cloud based platform, such as auto-scaling, 0 downtime deployment.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Microsoft Azure is highly scalable and flexible. You can quickly scale up or down additional resources and computing power.
  • You have no longer upfront investments for hardware. You only pay for the use of your computing power, storage space, or services.
  • The uptime that can be achieved and guaranteed is very important for our company. This includes the rapid maintenance for security updates that are mostly carried out by Microsoft.
  • The wide range of capabilities of services that are possible in Microsoft Azure. You can practically put or create anything in Microsoft Azure.
Read full review
Cons
IBM
  • Need: VISUALIZATION CAPABILITIES! Particularly with the Conversation Service.
  • Need: Annotation capabilities for dialog nodes in Conversation Service.
  • Need: Search/querying capabilities in Conversation Service
  • Need: Clearer documentation of the S2T service. I had to use a third party website for an understanding of how to use this.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • The cost of resources is difficult to determine, technical documentation is frequently out of date, and documentation and mapping capabilities are lacking.
  • The documentation needs to be improved, and some advanced configuration options require research and experimentation.
  • Microsoft's licensing scheme is too complex for the average user, and Azure SQL syntax is too different from traditional SQL.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
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Usability
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
As Microsoft Azure is [doing a] really good with PaaS. The need of a market is to have [a] combo of PaaS and IaaS. While AWS is making [an] exceptionally well blend of both of them, Azure needs to work more on DevOps and Automation stuff. Apart from that, I would recommend Azure as a great platform for cloud services as scale.
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Reliability and Availability
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
Read full review
Support Rating
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
We were running Windows Server and Active Directory, so [Microsoft] Azure was a seamless transition. We ran into a few, if any support issues, however, the availability of Microsoft Azure's support team was more than willing and able to guide us through the process. They even proposed solutions to issues we had not even thought of!
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Implementation Rating
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
IBM
CF is what we initially went with to establish a development pipeline and start our cloud journey, now we are expanding this and although we are now pulling in many other tools and functions around CF, it is not being replaced. It stands out as having a key place working ‘with’ git, Kubernetes, IBM cloud etc, not against or segregated from it.
Read full review
Microsoft
As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
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Return on Investment
IBM
  • IBM Bluemix is mainly a foundation enabler at this stage, although our business plan does look promising.
  • The low cost of development on Bluemix for a start-up like us is so helpful......we had no spare cash for this project besides what we could save or borrow at first, and that wasn't much. We are still trying to attract venture capital to cover the main Cordova Coding effort plus the launch "Cash Burn".
  • Features like push notifications, mobile-back end, and world-beating security help us to sell our SaaS products/services.
  • The pure (usually!) functionality of IBM products and services is very rewarding to work with.They are so insightful and thoughtful, to say naught of clever!
Read full review
Microsoft
  • For about 2 years we didn't have to do anything with our production VMs, the system ran without a hitch, which meant our engineers could focus on features rather than infrastructure.
  • DNS management was very easy in Azure, which made it easy to upgrade our cluster with zero downtime.
  • Azure Web UI was easy to work with and navigate, which meant our senior engineers and DevOps team could work with Azure without formal training.
Read full review
ScreenShots