A multi-cloud and industry-standard Platform-as-a-Service Solution
IBM Cloud Foundry is one of the most powerful, highly scalable, and widely used platforms that not only offers IaaS and PaaS cloud …
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What is IBM Cloud Foundry?
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,…
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Popular Features
- Scalability (24)8.585%
- Development environment creation (22)7.777%
- Upgrades and platform fixes (22)7.575%
- Services-enabled integration (23)7.575%
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What is IBM Cloud Foundry?
IBM Cloud Foundry is an IBM version of the open-source platform designed to make it easier and faster to build, test, deploy, and scale applications. Enterprises can now run Cloud Foundry in a public isolated environment, while natively integrating with other IBM Cloud services, such as AI, Blockchain, IoT, and data tools.
Cloud Foundry Enterprise Environment (CFEE) runs on a Kubernetes service, which reduces complexity by giving development teams a comprehensive set of familiar tools under one management umbrella. CFEE allows IT organizations to safeguard their existing investment in Cloud Foundry, while seamlessly bringing in new skill sets that will lead to building apps that provide contemporary customer experiences.
IBM Cloud Foundry Features
Platform-as-a-Service Features
- Supported: Ease of building user interfaces
- Supported: Scalability
- Supported: Platform management overhead
- Supported: Workflow engine capability
- Supported: Services-enabled integration
- Supported: Development environment creation
- Supported: Issue recovery
- Supported: Upgrades and platform fixes
Additional Features
- Supported: Ease of use building interfaces
- Supported: Service enabled integration
- Supported: Development environment integration
IBM Cloud Foundry Video
Learn more about IBM Cloud Foundry: http://ibm.biz/cloud-foundry
Check out this lightboard video with Sai Vennam from IBM Cloud, as he shows you how Cloud Foundry enables you to build, deploy, test and scale applications without having to manually configure and manage your se...
 Show More IBM Cloud Foundry Integrations
- IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
- IBM Cloud Continuous Delivery
- IBM Cloud DevOps Insights
IBM Cloud Foundry Competitors
- Microsoft Azure
- Amazon AWS
- Google Cloud Platform
IBM Cloud Foundry Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
| Supported Countries | https://console.bluemix.net/docs/containers/cs_regions.html#regions-and-zones |
| Supported Languages | EnglishEnglish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese/Brazil, Spanish, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Microsoft Azure are common alternatives for IBM Cloud Foundry.
Reviewers rate Scalability and Platform management overhead highest, with a score of 8.5.
The most common users of IBM Cloud Foundry are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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(26-32 of 32)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
July 15, 2017
Watch out....you'll be surprised, and then VERY sorry! Seems to be a great product--with limited to no support.
Visual recognition demonstration for our customers. We used it for this single demonstration, which took only about a week to 10 days, and the results were presented to several levels or management and we well as 3 levels of customer management with VERY positive response. We trained the the Watson visual recognition tool with 1250 'positive' images of five different objects (250 training images for each object), along with 125 negative images (25 negative images for each object). Then we tested the visual recognition software with pictures of the same type of objects (but using none of the training images) to see how well, and how fast it performed. The positive hit rate was very good (typically 70% or better) with images of the same object, and the rejection rate was typically very good as well (again, better than 70% when the trained object was not in the image). It also did very well when we combined 2-3 objects in the same image. The really surprising thing was that the images could be screen shots (not terribly surprising perhaps), but we could also take a picture of the screen shot with a cell phone and use that--with almost identical results. (When these images were blown up they were quite grainy, so that's why we were surprised.)
However, the problems we encountered with billing, technical support (or total lack thereof), quickly demonstrated that this service was not something we could use for serious work or production.
However, the problems we encountered with billing, technical support (or total lack thereof), quickly demonstrated that this service was not something we could use for serious work or production.
- Visual recognition. We put together a number of very effective demonstrations, over a short period (7-10 days) to show our management team as well as customers how it would be done, how the Bluemix applications could be integrated with other services (eg. Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft's OneDrive) to create one very capable, automated, integrated application that could solve one of our customer's knotty problems.
- The visual recognition application was the only thing we tried during this 7-10 days period. Significant issues with technical and account support (there was absolutely none in any time of what would be considered a 'timely' manner, led us to realize that it was not a service we could use for production, and we therefore did not continue to try out other services.
- Although we didn't get to the point of using several services, the services for storage and visual recognition, as well as those for integrating with other cloud provider services (e.g., AWS) were smooth and effortless.
- ALMOST EVERYTHING. Account support was virtually non-existent. We had set up a trial account on the basis of how many training images we could use (they advertised that it was something like 100 per day--but it turned out that the actual number was for the entire trial period. Thus, we almost immediately ran into our limit and could not proceed. We set up a second trial account, but couldn't get that one to work at all (with no meaningful error messages to why it wasn't working). Finally in desperation, we set up a third account tied to a personal credit card. (It was the weekend and we had to have a demonstration ready for Monday afternoon.) That third account, although setup, also would not work. (Some of the problems could have been the result of not having three separate, easily available emails, phone numbers, and billing addresses to use in setting up the accounts, which certainly exacerbated the issues.) On Monday morning we were finally able to reach someone that helped get the 'billed' account turned up--but even they admitted they could not figure out why it had not worked on Sunday.
- Over the period of about three days we made multiple attempts to reach both technical and account support. Generally the wait was something close to 24 hours, far, far beyond what we would be able to use in a production environment.
- Technical support was generally quite a bit more helpful that the account support team. The technical folks were able to get 'stuck' and non-working account working again, but the account support team was completely unable to provide any billing information. This included how much had been billed to the 'personal' credit card (the one we had to use because it was setup during the weekend when our own internal finance folks couldn't provide a company credit card), and they were completely unable to provide an actual statement, either then or for months later.
- One thing of particular note--the 'on-line help' feature for account services was extremely disappointing. There was absolutely no way to get any kind of billing or accounting information using the on-line services. You would think that you could, but you simply can not!
- We were finally able to get an accounting almost 6 months later and ONLY because it had gone to some form of 'collection' department within IBM and they were trying to get the final $24 paid. (The biggest part of the amount due from the demonstration period, which was about 7-10 days and had amounted to about $350 in charges, at least 10 times what we had expected) had been automatically charged to the 'personal' credit card we used in desperation to get an account set up so we could get a very important demonstration for our out-of-town customers who were expecting a demonstration the following Monday afternoon. However, the billing fell across two accounting months, with only about $24 in the second month, but during that account, the bank had changed their association with MasterCard to Visa and had issued new cards and rejected any automatic billing to the old card. This left a balance of $24 to be paid, which we had no clue of. We noticed that we had only received the one bill, but not the second, but again, calls to IBM were either not returned or the people we reached told us they could not find out how much was still owed or how we could pay the balance by phone. Finally, almost 6 months after our demo, we received an email from their 'collections' department. We told them that we were not going to provide every 1 cent of funds UNTIL they provided us with an accounting of the services used, etc. That took a few days and we were finally able to get the $24 resolved.
- We explained most of this to at least five different technical/account support people along the way. At NO time, did ANY IBM representative ever offer ANY kind of 'consideration' for the trouble we had had, even after learning that the company was unable to reimburse us for 'personal' expenses BECAUSE we could not receive a standard billing statement.
July 12, 2017
Benefits to Small Startups from Bluemix
It's used across the whole organisation, Bluemix is providing the foundation for our enterprise apps, which we develop as mobile-first developers. The availability of push notifications, the functionality and integrity of the mobile system, as well as the overall security are the keys to its value to us.
- Flexible development environments available, all interoperative, from Docker-based to apiconnect-based. We can use several repo-sites and keep code versions well tracked and reclaimable on any of them. The networked nature of the systems means we can develop from a world wide basis of engineers and programmers, although right now we have one Senior Software Engineer and a couple of coders, in different countries.
- Datasources can be connected from anywhere.
- Mobile Endpoint Security, and Server Security (meeting or exceeding 27001 and 27002) with IBM, represent resellable value to us.
- We are a fledgling company, but as soon as we are able to afford to use the Blockchains offered by IBM, we will do so, because we can eliminate one entire class of financial (or any trust/transaction-based) risk this way.
- With the use of Cordova we can code our front ends once and cover the web, Android and iOS platforms together with minimal fuss to tailor the code.
- Sometimes the API Connect GUIs don't cleanly disengage after attaching models or updating schema and it is hard to know what has been written successfully and which (if any) models or tables were missed. I shouldn't have to manually check through a list of 377 models to find the ones in and out of a list on either models, folder or database tables. Printing a summary even in logs which did a "diff" sort of thing between 'task-set' and 'task-completed' (referring to attaching models or updating schema as tasks here as 'tasks').
- Provide access to Postgres Database in Sydney datacentre for Australia.
- Clearer documentation around setting up a secure (referring to SSL and certificate setup here) server on eg, chubby1.au-sydney.mybluemix.net.
- Allow a ramp in pricing onto the Blockchains. We will not be able to afford it until quite a few years into production, even if we launch successfully.
We were using container services from Bluemix - CloudFoundry PaaS to manage our applications. Apps were Java wars wrapped in Docker containers. Also Softlayer VPS's were used to provide for our Cassandra cluster, where we installed and managed Cassandra instances manually. Four VPS nodes total were in use.
- PaaS
- Watson (did not use in prd, just saw good demos)
- Bare metal servers
- At the time we used there was no direct Docker offering (had to use containers via CloudFoundry api, which is another layer to learn)
- No hosted Cassandra database offering (or similar DB, like Amazon Dynamo)
- I was unable to use VPN link with another provider: Both sides had incompatible configurations and it was impossible to instantiate working VPN connection. Support was only able to point that the other party uses settings that are incompatible with IBM.
July 12, 2017
IBM Bluemix Review
To my knowledge it is only used in our department, but then again some companies don't share information horizontally well. It's used mainly as a general hosting product.
- Easy to use
- Simple UX
- Good design
- Expensive
June 22, 2017
Why I chose Bluemix over AWS and Azure
I'm using Bluemix primarily as a means of centralizing data from multiple IoT devices. It solves the problem of providing a platform by which multiple multiple application components (e.g., database, authentication, etc). can be implemented quickly and with little time and money investment. This is an ideal setup for me because it requires minimal support for the infrastructure needed to host my end application.
- Makes a number of integrated modules available seamlessly (e.g., mobile, database, authentication, etc.
- The node js platform for hosting IoT components is extremely easy to use.
- The node-red graphical wiring tool is makes it especially easy to integrate 3rd party services.
- Excellent customer support.
- More tutorials/education materials for Cloudant would be nice.
- More flexible notifications for outages would be helpful.
- More integrations to third party services within node-red would be useful.
June 20, 2017
Banking with IBM Bluemix
Currently, it is used for the development of an API for a payment services directive. We are a bank within EU and have to implement such a solution.
- Speed - with a few regions we can always load balance for maximum performance.
- Availabilty - anywhere, anytime.
- Usability - everything in one place. Usage metrics and services.
- Maybe a better user management interface. Every region and all users in one view.
IBM Bluemix is being used as my primary cloud computing service, having recently replaced AWS as my preferred service. I work with an IT consulting firm, and specialize in designing IT infrastructure for businesses, usually start-ups. My company has changed over the years as technology changes, originally setting servers up at the clients location, then moving to hosting them myself, and now I utilize cloud services with IBM as my primary source of server environments since software development is the focus of 75% of the start-ups I have been encountering, which is where BlueMix shines. Instead of detailing out how I use these services, I am going to explain the differences between IAAS (AWS/Google/Azure) vs PAAS (BlueMix, Redhat). The main difference is what level of control the system focuses on, when it comes to IAAS, the system is focused on infrastructure, such as building a server with x processors, x amount of ram, a storage system with X Gb of data. PAAS on the other hand, is focused on the whole platform that will run your software rather than just the simulated hardware specifications. AWS (IAAS) lets me build a virtual server with 2 processors, 1 gb of ram, 15 Gb of drive space, and 2 network adapters, which I then need to install an OS on, BlueMix (PAAS) lets me setup a geographically clustered environment that can serve HTML, PHP, and MySQL, while also being able to pull Microsoft SQL, while running a version tracking system, such as GIT. So from the start, I specify what I need my system to do to run my software, rather than what I need my server to have to run my OS, to run my server software that I can add additional functionality to in order to allow my custom software to operate best
- Bluemix is great at providing a custom environment that offers everything I need to develop and run my software, rather than just providing a blank virtual server that I need to configure
- Bluemix is very good at getting a "ready to use" environment deployed very quickly
- Offers a wide variety of very unique, and cutting edge services. For example, I recently came across a Bluemix service that analyses any documents I want, such as email, and can tell me what emotions I am conveying. Is it a hateful sounding email, or a happy sounding one.
- Documentation is lacking unfortunately, and while the new version of BlueMix is very quick and easy to use, it still requires a heavy development background to get features out of it that would end up rivaling AWS.
- Stability isn't where AWS is, and while being a perfect development system, it isn't where you want to run a production site where downtime causes financial losses.
- It is very hard to move your app off of BlueMix to another cloud service, as you just can't get the same level of platform customization, and you are going to absolutely be stuck to other PAAS providers.