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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

(1-7 of 7)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Implemented for a use-case that the documentation claimed it could support (100 calls a minute) and it failed. Couldn't handle more than 20-40.
  • Worked well for validating data, reduced API calls we needed to make and maintain significantly.
  • Good for cloud like cron jobs for sanity checks and smoke tests.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • It directly affected our expenses since we do not need to deploy and maintain a set of separate applications.
  • It allowed us to pay for only the amount of time cloud functions run.
  • It saved on maintenance and monitoring of the applications it replaced.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Better scalabilty and performance when handling unexpected events, with low maintenance.
  • Fast deploymant, if system was designed in microservices architecture.
  • Cost increase compared to legacy VM service, when used cloud functions as API gateway (when response time depend on othe client/server) - in frequent usage situations.
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