IBM Cloud Foundry vs. Kubernetes

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cloud Foundry
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
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.
$0.07
Per GBH
Kubernetes
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Kubernetes is an open-source container cluster manager.N/A
Pricing
IBM Cloud FoundryKubernetes
Editions & Modules
Community Runtimes
$0.07
Per GBH
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cloud FoundryKubernetes
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Cloud FoundryKubernetes
Considered Both Products
IBM Cloud Foundry
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
While we are still looking at kubernetes and other services, we will continue to use Cloud Foundry because of the advantages it provides. The support from IBM is good and take a lot of work that our developers and ops had to do away.
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
CF is what we initially went with to establish a development pipeline and start our cloud journey, now we are expanding this and although we are now pulling in many other tools and functions around CF, it is not being replaced. It stands out as having a key place working ‘with’ …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
IBM Cloud Foundry is our first choice industry-standard platform as a service (PaaS) which has always provided us with quicker, simpler, and more consistent ways for the deployment of the cloud-native applications which in result saved us lots of time and money.
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
IBM Cloud Foundry is easier and faster to get going and offers the same benefits we needed.
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
Dynatrace Network Application Monitoring (NAM), formerly DCRUM, Azure Application Gateway and Azure App Service
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
When I started with prototyping five months ago, I tried IBM Cloud Foundry and AWS, but finally I preferred IBM Cloud Foundry.

I selected IBM Cloud Foundry because IBM service CLI is quite simple to use in devops. It works with the recent versions of Python and it's not …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
Why I prefer IBM Cloud Foundry platform over AWS Elastic Beanstalk or Heroku Platform is the automation of development process and pushing of projects to cloud with clear step by step instructions - which is available on the documentation. I can say categorically, the terminal …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
IBM Cloud Foundry is easy to use and allows for fast and easy deployment of web apps.
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
IBM Cloud Foundry provides many programming languages. It is a managed service and it allows us to use only the resouces without the managed overhead.
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
Ease of use and all the capabilities we need are well built-in. Though we had to work around for p2p security and log draining which is not bad.
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
Cloud Foundry has lot of benefits because platform as a service provided for the developers to implement applications based on the use cases. Different use cases required different buildpacks to run on. It has flexibility to code, push, and run flexibility. Provided ease of use …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
We have had to move our deployments to Kubernetes because we needed more reliability. We moved to Google because IBM rates and billing was so backward and expensive. Our client was also very angry at all the outages, lost revenue, production down time and inordinately expensive …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
IBM Cloud Foundry is among the services provided by our cloud provider. This is why we choose to go with Cloud Foundry.
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
AWS and Digital Ocean; Access to a larger pool of services; whatever your business needs, IBM provides it.
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
It is a cloud-based solution and for all my customers that want to migrate to cloud, this is the solution that we are proposing to customers, as it provides a lot of benefits over private cloud. Scalability and resiliency are not a major challenge and it can be used with other …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
IBM Cloud Foundry (CF) is simpler and there is a service model that fits most of our internal services. We are going to Loopback for API and Node.js and we have an easy path to go with Bluemix. It's a very easy way to start if you are moving to the cloud and mainly if you are …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
We chose to go with more bare metal options since Bluemix didn't really offer these at the time. It was simpler to get up and running with the bare metal service, and we felt that any problems we ran into would be a result of our own incompetence rather than problems with the …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
I have use EC2 and Microsoft's Azure. To me, both Azure and Bluemix were fantastic, but they each had some pros and cons. Azure had more services to offer, but their biggest flaw was in their inability to integrate and work with external platforms, APIs, Programs, etc.. Like …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
While IBM works well is when being used by large organizations, these other vendors work well with smaller organizations. We ended up being willing to pay more for Heroku, as they have such an easy-to-use service, and our deployments worked as expected every time.
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
Used AWS and Azure.
AWS has more features and a far superior interface responsivesness. It's actually usable! That being said default configurations and menus in AWS are more cryptic then necessary.
Azure seems to be the gold standard for pre-configuration and ease of use. …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
Bluemix had a much easier route to get into the artificial intelligence side of things with Watson skills. It also seemed a lot more straightforward to use things like the Weather Channel data, sentiment analysis... etc., than the others. I'd also had a bad experience with AWS …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
Not even close--as noted in previous answers, we will likely use the competition before even considering IBM Bluemix.
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
We have used Red Hat which does not do business in Australia with people like us. They were a promising service (PaaS) while we were able to use the free version but as soon as we needed access to serious mobile-first services we had to pay and their policy meant we had to …
Chose IBM Cloud Foundry
I like when the provider offers cloud deployment via standard orchestration mechanisms (like Docker, Kubernetes, DCOS) This is currently well covered by Azure. Amazon also has good flexibility (supports Kubernetes, DCOS). It's good that Bluemix added support for Docker and …
Kubernetes
Chose Kubernetes
It stacks well against OpenShift. The only downside for OpenShift is the multiple operators and the custom logic implemented in the product, plus the upgrades, which tend to be a bit longer due to the more complex implementation. Overall, these are similar products but with a …
Chose Kubernetes
Nomad is a simpler, more down-to-earth alternative to Kubernetes. In some sense, it is more similar to Amazon's ECS, but with more bells and whistles. For use cases not requiring the whole complexity of Kubernetes platform, Nomad can provide a much simpler and at the same time …
Chose Kubernetes
We evaluated Docker Swarm as usage of docker is very distributed in our company. But docker swarm has not as many features as kubernetes and we have large, complex architectures which require good scalability and robustness - this is a huge strength of kubernetes compared to …
Chose Kubernetes
Well, me and me team select Kubernetes for the natural solution and the easily assignation of resources to deploy a solution than could have multiple clients in the same infrastructure, so, for each one client we are running a set of different pods, and that's why we select …
Chose Kubernetes
Kubernetes cluster is cable to manage multiple nodes on on-premises or cloud infrastructure. In Kubernetes, we can easily add new nodes when ever required. We can easily update and rollback our application hosted on Kubernetes with the help of rolling and blue green deployment. …
Chose Kubernetes
Most of the required features for any orchestration tool or framework, which is provided by Kubernetes. After understanding all modules and features of the K8S, it is the best fit for us as compared with others out there.
Chose Kubernetes
I didn't have too much experience or exposure to OpenShift but I do remember that in certain areas our organization found Kubernetes to be more useful and met our needs in comparison to OpenShift. Although I can't compare, I think it's easier to customize Kubernetes because of …
Chose Kubernetes
Kubernetes is very unique. I do not think there are any competitors to take over its leading place. And you can always use Kuberntes with other tools to make the whole system better. Kubernetes is backed up by Google and has been tested over the years. It is reliable, fast, and …
Chose Kubernetes
When planning our latest product we tried out many hosted container service and a few local tools. These included services run by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon and tools from companies like Docker and Apache. We ended up selecting Kubernetes because it was compatible with all …
Chose Kubernetes
I used OpenShift v2 - which was pre-Kubernetes. (It now uses Kubernetes under the hood - but keeps it fairly hidden). Kubernetes was a ton more stable and easier to use. No more custom CLI to use in order to script together deployments. No more messy ‘push your entire code …
Chose Kubernetes
Docker Swarm is not as advanced as Kubernetes and there are no out of the box solutions for auto scaling and deployment strategies. Docker swarm doesnot have much experience with production deployments at scale. Swarm has a smaller community, and less frequent releases as …
Chose Kubernetes
With AWS ECS, you have to provision the virtual hardware, then use that hardware as a pool for your container service. Each service has to be built out and scaled independently. Kubernetes allows us to use a cluster of machines like a big pool of resources, scaling and shipping …
Chose Kubernetes
Kubernetes is a great alternative to cloud hosted expensive solutions. It is extremely well documented and maintained. It is probably the best home-grown solution available for container infrastructure management.
Chose Kubernetes
We already had an enterprise Kubernetes 8 set up, so once we got our namespace it took me about 2 weeks to go from not knowing anything to having a self-contained jar in a container, running on Kubernetes 8. In comparison, it took me two weeks to install Java on a blank server …
Chose Kubernetes
As I said earlier also -
- K8s manage the workloads better as compared to OpenStack in terms of reliability, observability & reachability.
- K8s is not limited to only a single networking or storage solution as compared to OpenStack.
Features
IBM Cloud FoundryKubernetes
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloud Foundry
7.6
Ratings
5% below category average
Kubernetes
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow engine capability8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication6.40 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification4.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloud Foundry
-
Ratings
Kubernetes
8.4
Ratings
8% above category average
Security and Isolation00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Container Orchestration00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Cluster Management00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Storage Management00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Discovery Tools00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Cloud FoundryKubernetes
Small Businesses
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.6 out of 10
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Cloud FoundryKubernetes
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Cloud FoundryKubernetes
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Cloud Foundry is a solid service from the IBM Cloud platform. It is easy to learn, and does not usually require you to make drastic changes to your existing applications. It is especially good for new applications that are cloud native, or micro-services, that can be easily updated and deployed. With its blue/green deployment, you can achieve 0 downtime for your customers.
Read full review
Along with all the best features and support by k8s, the automatic container scheduling to worker nodes and also self-healing containers which is what I like the most. On the other side, when I was installing the k8s cluster on CentOS 8, it was quite difficult for me, but never mind it is working as we expected and it is a one-time effort. Especially, in my case, there are more than 7 application containers required to run and communicate with each other, so for us, Kubernetes is an optimal solution.
Read full review
Pros
  • Intuitive user interface makes it easy for anyone to use, regardless of their professional background.
  • A lot of the services integrate well with external platforms, APIs, and programs, not just IBM services. A lot of the competitors in this space lack this ability.
  • Maybe it is just our contract in particular, but support and help is always made available.
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  • Complex cluster management can be done with simple commands with strong authentication and authorization schemes
  • Exhaustive documentation and open community smoothens the learning process
  • As a user a few concepts like pod, deployment and service are sufficient to go a long way
Read full review
Cons
  • 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.
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  • Local development, Kubernetes does tend to be a bit complicated and unnecessary in environments where all development is done locally.
  • The need for add-ons, Helm is almost required when running Kubernetes. This brings a whole new tool to manage and learn before a developer can really start to use Kubernetes effectively.
  • Finicy configmap schemes. Kubernetes configmaps often have environment breaking hangups. The fail safes surrounding configmaps are sadly lacking.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
The Kubernetes is going to be highly likely renewed as the technologies that will be placed on top of it are long term as of planning. There shouldn't be any last minute changes in the adoption and I do not anticipate sudden change of the core underlying technology. It is just that the slow process of technology adoption that makes it hard to switch to something else.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
It is an eminently usable platform. However, its popularity is overshadowed by its complexity. To properly leverage the capabilities and possibilities of Kubernetes as a platform, you need to have excellent understanding of your use case, even better understanding of whether you even need Kubernetes, and if yes - be ready to invest in good engineering support for the platform itself
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Alternatives Considered
IBM Cloud Foundry is our first choice industry-standard platform as a service (PaaS) which has always provided us with quicker, simpler, and more consistent ways for the deployment of the cloud-native applications which in result saved us lots of time and money.
Read full review
As I said earlier also - - K8s manage the workloads better as compared to OpenStack in terms of reliability, observability & reachability. - K8s is not limited to only a single networking or storage solution as compared to OpenStack. - Networking (which is a key concept) is much simpler in K8s as compared to OpenStack. - It is possible to upgrade your applications without downtime in K8s but in OpenStack, you either have to divert the traffic or face an outage because you have to delete the whole stack & then recreate it.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • This was the founding solution used to allow us to move in to and test out a cloud pipeline. This is what paved the way for a full production cloud solution to be possible.
  • Having Cloud Foundry at the base of our development and sandpit environment, segregated away from our standard on premise solution has moved away red tape and ensured an agile way forward.
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  • Because of microservices, Kubernetes makes it easy to find the cost of each application easily.
  • Like every new technology, initially, it took more resources to educate ourselves but over a period of time, I believe it's going to be worth it.
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