Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is designed to make deploying and managing containerized applications easy. It offers serverless Kubernetes, an integrated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) experience, and enterprise-grade security and governance. It allows development and operations teams on a single platform to rapidly build, deliver, and scale applications with confidence.N/A
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Score 9.2 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
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)IBM 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
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Considered Both Products
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Chose Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
The ability to create new instances (i.e. elastic provisioning) is probably the fastest with Azure Kubernetes Service compared to the alternatives that I have looked at. From a pricing perspective, Microsoft always seems to find a way to be more competitive in this area, and …
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Chose IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Many solutions and vendors are offering the service to deploy a solution for based Kubernetes cloud, but we have selected IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service for the optimization, high availability, DRP process, reduced downtimes, support, documentation, and the easy way to deploy Kube…
Chose IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
IBM Kubernetes Service and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) are two popular managed Kubernetes offerings that allow organizations to deploy, manage and scale their containerized applications.

Advantages of IBM Kubernetes Service
Chose IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Well, as we were in a state to compulsory implement this service, but then it is very suited for deployment of a service that has higher fault tolerance. And maintaining the lifecycle of custom made resources. And the ability to integrate other services also
Chose IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
I say IKS still has a more to work, while it benefits in being an early adopter like GKE, most of these services are easier to work on when it comes to web management, something the IKS lacks and needs to improve since its release because of how well-established the management …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
-
Ratings
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
7.5
14 Ratings
5% below category average
Security and Isolation00 Ratings7.514 Ratings
Container Orchestration00 Ratings8.214 Ratings
Cluster Management00 Ratings7.714 Ratings
Storage Management00 Ratings7.514 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization00 Ratings7.414 Ratings
Discovery Tools00 Ratings6.814 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks00 Ratings7.614 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery00 Ratings7.713 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging00 Ratings7.014 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Small Businesses
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.3 out of 10
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Score 9.2 out of 10
Docker
Docker
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Score 9.2 out of 10
Docker
Docker
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(5 ratings)
8.1
(79 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(16 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(16 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 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
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
At one instance, there was a fire in our data center and the backup power had some issues because of which the whole DC went down. I believe with AKS and the replication it's easier to handle such a situation. Also, the scenario would have been pretty transparent to the end-users.
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IBM
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is ideal for deploying modern applications on a microservices architecture -- where easy scaling and ability to update are important. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service also handles automated deployments and load balancing very well, particularly if you're already working in the IBM Cloud ecosystem. There are applications less suited to IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service -- such as very small applications, where managing an IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service cluster would be overkill. Also, users not familiar with container organization might find IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service to be a challenge to manage effectively.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Highly repeatable process
  • Minimizes the amount of software to install
  • Easily scale resources to meet demand
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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.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Need to update cluster manually
  • Policies cannot be updated for existing components
  • if any change in policy every has to create cluster
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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
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
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
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
IBM
IBM's cloud is almost infallible.
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Performance
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
Microsoft support was really good, whenever we raise any ticket they come back to us within a couple of hours.
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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
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
The ability to create new instances (i.e. elastic provisioning) is probably the fastest with Azure Kubernetes Service compared to the alternatives that I have looked at. From a pricing perspective, Microsoft always seems to find a way to be more competitive in this area, and literally every other field they play in.
Read full review
IBM
The IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is quite flexible platform with profitable Cloud functions performance and the data security through IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is nice. To manage container easily and process huge amount of data at the same time, the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is amazing ad the platform deployment is very easy after training.
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Scalability
Microsoft
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
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Positive impact in moving applications to cloud from the in-hose data center to save cost
  • Sometimes got affected with some bugs on the AKS infrastructure but hasn't caused a big kios as our production footprint in AKS is not yet high
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IBM
  • IKS can provide around 30% savings when it comes to operational costs since Kubernetes is designed to run applications in most machines in the most efficient manner possible.
  • Managed Kubernetes can save a company time by 45% since Managed Kubernetes usually is seamlessly updated, without any interruptions with the workload. IKS fall into this benefit.
  • We heard people had saved in maintenance downtimes when it comes to Kubernetes by a factor of 10 so IKS can contribute to more flexible and distributed services with virtually no downtime.
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ScreenShots