IBM Cloud Foundry vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cloud Foundry
Score 8.1 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 8.6 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

Top Pros
Top Cons
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
7% 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
8.6
17 Ratings
5% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.716 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings9.316 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.816 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings7.016 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings7.916 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.415 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings9.516 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings9.016 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.715 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Small Businesses
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Score 9.1 out of 10
Akamai Cloud Computing
Akamai Cloud Computing
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Score 9.1 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(32 ratings)
8.5
(88 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(15 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(27 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(27 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
In terms of cloud computing, Microsoft Azure is the only comprehensive result the company offers. Regardless of how big or small an organization is, it can make use of this system. As a cyber-security professional, this is your best option for data management. A business that wants to minimize capital expenditures can use Microsoft Azure. Many Microsoft services accept it. People with little or no knowledge of cloud computing may find it impossible. It isn’t the solution for companies that don’t want to risk having only one platform and infrastructure vendor.
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
  • Azure simply provides end to end life cycle. Starting from the development to automated deployment, you will find [a] bunch of options. Custom hook-points allow [integration] on-premise resources as well.
  • Excellent documentation around all the services make it really easy for any novice. Overall support by [the] community and Azure Technical team is exceptional.
  • BOT Services, Computer Vision services, ML frameworks provide excellent results as compare to similar services provided by other giants in the same space.
  • Azure data services provide excellent support to ingest data from different sources, ETL, and consumption of data for BI purpose.
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
  • In our experience, Azure Kubernetes Survice was difficult to set up, which is why we used Kubernetes on top of VMs.
  • Azure REST API is a bit difficult to use, which made it difficult for us to automate our interactions with Azure.
  • Azure's Web UI does a good job of showing metrics on individual VMs, but it would be great if there was a way to show certain metrics from multiple VMs on one dashboard. For example, hard drive usage on our database VMs.
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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
Microsoft Azure's overall usability has been better than expected. Often times vendors promise the world, only to leave you with a run-down town. Not the case with our experience. From an implementation perspective, all went perfect, and from the user-facing experience we have had no technical issues, just some learning curve issues that are more about "why" than "how"
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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
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Support Rating
IBM
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Support is easy with all the knowledge base articles available for free on the web. Plus, if you have a preferred status you can leverage their concierge support to get rapid response. Sometimes they’ll bounce you around a lot to get you to the right person, but they are quite responsive (especially when you are paying for the service). Many of the older Microsoft skills are also transferable from old-school on-prem to Azure-based virtual interfaces.
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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.
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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
  • Brings down Capex to customers.
  • Some of the built-in security features of DDoS Basic protection that comes with VNET on Azure or even WAF on AGW brings huge advantages to customers.
  • Hybrid benefits for those who have software assurance can save even more costs by moving to Azure.
Read full review
ScreenShots