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IBM Cloud Functions

IBM Cloud Functions

Overview

What is IBM Cloud Functions?

IBM Cloud Functions is a PaaS platform based on Apache OpenWhisk. With it, developers write code (“actions”) that respond to external events. Actions are hosted, executed, and scaled on demand based on the number of events coming in. No servers…

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Recent Reviews

Not the worse IBM product

3 out of 10
June 01, 2021
Our IBM Cloud Functions [connects] various services by picking up JSON data from buckets at a certain time interval, modifying it, and …
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Awards

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Pricing

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Basic Cloud Functions Rate

$0.00017

Cloud
per second of execution

API Gateway Rate

Free

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://console.bluemix.net/openwhisk/l…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

What is IBM Cloud Functions?

IBM Cloud Functions is a serverless programming platform based on Apache OpenWhisk. Developers use their favorite programming language to write code (“actions”) that responds to external events. Actions are hosted and executed in IBM Cloud, and scale on demand based on the number of events coming in. There are no servers or other infrastructure to provision and manage.

Actions respond to a variety of events. Typical events include periodic timers for batch job processing, HTTP-based API requests for implementing RESTful APIs using Functions, and responding to change events requests from IBM Cloud services like Cloudant and IBM Cloud Event Streams, and third-party events like Slack and GitHub state changes.

Because Cloud Functions is a serverless, event-driven platform, you don't need to explicitly provision servers. Developers working with chatbots, blockchain, AI, APIs, microservices, mobile, IoT, and many other apps can focus on writing app logic instead of worrying about auto-scaling, high availability, updates, and maintenance. Out of the box auto-scaling and load balancing means that you don't have to manually configure clusters, http plugins, and so on. IBM takes care of all of the hardware, networking, and software administration. All you have to do is provide the code.

Visit our Docs pages for pricing and support information.

IBM Cloud Functions Features

Additional Features

  • Supported: Elastic load balancing
  • Supported: Template library of pre-written functions encapsulating common use cases
  • Supported: Runtime build pack support for NodeJS, Python 2.7, Python 3, Swift, Ruby, Java, and executable programs written in Go, C++, shell script, etc.
  • Supported: “Bring Your Own Container” runtime support – users can provide a docker container image for their function action(s).

IBM Cloud Functions Integrations

  • GitHub
  • Any 3rd party service where they support a webhook/trigger API (e.g. slack
  • twilio)

IBM Cloud Functions Competitors

IBM Cloud Functions Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesUnited States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany
Supported LanguagesEnglish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portugese/Brazil, Spanish, Chinese simplified & traditional

Frequently Asked Questions

IBM Cloud Functions is a PaaS platform based on Apache OpenWhisk. With it, developers write code (“actions”) that respond to external events. Actions are hosted, executed, and scaled on demand based on the number of events coming in. No servers or infrastructure to provision and manage.

AWS Lambda and Azure Functions are common alternatives for IBM Cloud Functions.

The most common users of IBM Cloud Functions are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(57)

Reviews

(1-1 of 1)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Our IBM Cloud Functions [connects] various services by picking up JSON data from buckets at a certain time interval, modifying it, and saving it to another bucket. We also have functions that connect to NLU, functions that connect to API endpoints, etc.
  • Relatively updated in terms of node versions supported
  • A trigger just stopped working for no reason at all. The IBM support team classified the issue as "Network connection dropped", we had huge costs associated with the outage.
  • There is no CI/CD setup through the dashboard, Toolchain doesn't work with functions, so we had to implement a manual solution.
  • The function code execution time is too slow - we tested the execution time of a function and a code running in a Cloud Foundry app and came up with 600ms for the function and 300ms for the CF app.
  • Documentation in terms of CI/CD is also a little bit hard to get, not enough examples of manifest files that include triggers, functions, and API endpoints.
IBM Cloud Functions [is] not the worse product on the IBM cloud. I decided to write this review as I thought it would be balanced. I would still use functions to set up a serverless architecture where execution time is pretty quick and the code is relatively simple.
I wouldn't use IBM Cloud Functions for async calls obviously, as costs could be higher. The functions documentation is lacking in terms of CI/CD, and there are unexplainable errors occurring - like the network connection that I mentioned. So I wouldn't just rely on IBM Cloud Functions too much for the entire system, but make sure it's diversified.
Function as a Service (FaaS)
N/A
N/A
Access Control and Security
N/A
N/A
Reporting & Analytics
N/A
N/A
  • Positive - reduced maintenance costs in some areas
  • Negative - setup costs as engineers take time to setup them
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