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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

    Score8 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

    Microsoft Azure

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft 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 Kubernetes ServiceMicrosoft Azure
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Developer
    $29
    per month
    Standard
    $100
    per month
    Professional Direct
    $1000
    per month
    Basic
    Free
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceMicrosoft Azure
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details—The 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 Kubernetes ServiceMicrosoft Azure
    Considered Both Products
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    27 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    25 Answers
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    31 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    28 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    35 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    19 Answers
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    24 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    26 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    34 Answers
    Features
    IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceMicrosoft Azure
    Container Management
    Comparison of Container Management features of IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    8.1
    20 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Security and Isolation8.120 Ratings00 Ratings
    Container Orchestration8.520 Ratings00 Ratings
    Cluster Management7.820 Ratings00 Ratings
    Storage Management8.020 Ratings00 Ratings
    Resource Allocation and Optimization8.020 Ratings00 Ratings
    Discovery Tools7.819 Ratings00 Ratings
    Update Rollouts and Rollbacks7.720 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self-Healing and Recovery8.418 Ratings00 Ratings
    Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.220 Ratings00 Ratings
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service and Microsoft Azure
    Feature
    IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure
    8.4
    27 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.126 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.624 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.225 Ratings
    Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.326 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.424 Ratings
    Operating system support00 Ratings8.926 Ratings
    Security controls00 Ratings8.626 Ratings
    Automation00 Ratings8.224 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceMicrosoft Azure
    Small Businesses
    Mirantis Kubernetes Engine
    Score8 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
    Score8.6 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SUSE Rancher
    Score9.4 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceMicrosoft Azure
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (86 ratings)
    8.7
    (96 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.9
    (16 ratings)
    10.0
    (17 ratings)
    Usability
    8.7
    (16 ratings)
    8.3
    (36 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    6.8
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.7
    (4 ratings)
    9.0
    (27 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.7
    (15 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.6
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceMicrosoft Azure
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
    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
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    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
    Incentivized
    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
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Read full review
    Usability
    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.
    Incentivized
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    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.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    IBM
    IBM's cloud is almost infallible.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    IBM
    IBM's cloud has a site in my conuntry (MEXICO) so the network latency was almost 0
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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!
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
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    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
    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].
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    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.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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