IBM Cloud Foundry vs. Microsoft Azure

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
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft 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 FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
Community Runtimes
$0.07
Per GBH
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe 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 FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Considered Both Products
IBM Cloud Foundry
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
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
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
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 (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 …
Microsoft Azure
Chose Microsoft Azure
Obviously this is just based on the virtualisation part of the product, but VM's in Microsoft Azure are well managable and no need to invest in hardware, which gives it an edge in a time where the need for VM's is getting less and less.
Chose Microsoft Azure
I feel that Microsoft Azure typically outperforms Google Cloud Platform in hybrid cloud capabilities, integration aspects, and, primarily, security compliance features. Azure offered superior integration with Microsoft's enterprise software ecosystem, and it's second to none in …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Mostly due to the ecosystem. I don't think there is anything in AWS that we would be missing out when using Microsoft Azure. We use Microsoft products on on-premise servers and also M365 / Office services that are well supported in Microsoft Azure. The pricing between AWS and …
Chose Microsoft Azure
AWS is good for linux virtual machines and mac virtual machines, Microsoft Azure doesn't do mac VMs. However, in my opinion Microsoft Azure is better in every other aspect, easier to use and just as cost effective.
Chose Microsoft Azure
AWS takes the cake here just due to how simple it is to configure IAM roles, users, and policies. Microsoft Azure is nearly neck-and-neck and could probably overtake them in the near future. Splunk for logging isn't that great and Microsoft Azure does a solid job but they could …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is a comprehensive platform that offers almost all functionalities and can provide even more. Due to ongoing extensive developments, additional functionalities are continuously being added and improved. Many new functionalities are also being added that are …
Chose Microsoft Azure
While Azure is a solid and robust platform, VMWare is a much better product with greater usability and features.
Chose Microsoft Azure
Azure works well with the items selected above - ex. Barracuda for backups. Integration is simple and functions.
Chose Microsoft Azure
Azure is more user friendly and provides much required scalability and flexibility.
Chose Microsoft Azure
AWS is the most stable cloud options but Azure has done well in last few years and provides good options specifically for Microsoft customers and who are more familiar with Microsoft technologies like WINDOWS, MS SQL SERVER, GITHUB, VISUAL STUDIO etc. Google cloud is more …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Azure is an ideal platform for disaster recovery and backup. It is very flexible because of its site regeneration capabilities and other features. All of our data can be backup, regardless of the language or operating system. Azure’s inherent flexibility comes from its status …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Remote accessibility for the mass people from the different places where both free and premium service is available that's why people choose Microsoft Azure. The main reason of switching from that to Microsoft Azure is the cost of operation and operating flexibility. The …
Chose Microsoft Azure
AWS and Azure are distinct classes, regardless of how we view them or which sub-areas. Their capabilities are the most comprehensive and sophisticated. Azure will benefit existing Microsoft customers, but AWS has a slight market share advantage. Microsoft Azure offers many …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Veeam Backup for Google Cloud Platform
Chose Microsoft Azure
Ease of use. Multiple Data centers across the globe. Load management. Backup and recovery options.
Chose Microsoft Azure
Because Microsoft Azure has more integrations and possibilities. Also most of the biggest companies are using it, so it gives the security and the back up to trust and work with confidence.
Chose Microsoft Azure
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" …
Chose Microsoft Azure
We actually utilized multiple cloud stacks, depending upon the customer environment and need. Those that heavily used MS products (Office on-prem or 365), Teams, etc, found it a better fit, with easier integration, for their needs.
Chose Microsoft Azure
I would say that Azure stacks up pretty good and sometimes better in comparison to what Google Cloud Platform has to offer. I don't like GCP for its absurd licensing fees and it's expensive for just Using EC2 Instances. However, DigitalOcean and AWS can offer far better …
Chose Microsoft Azure
The most common alternatives are Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. AWS is known for its non-existent customer support and abysmal documentation - Azure is clearly better on both fronts. Google Cloud Platform is a solid product, but in my experience Azure Functions …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Integration with other Microsoft products makes Azure stand out quite a bit. However, if you need to use open source software and to integrate with Linux systems then AWS or Google Cloud might be better alternatives. Google did not even come close to Azure in terms of …
Chose Microsoft Azure
Evaluated both AWS and GCP for a similar set of use cases to realize that AWS required additional third-party add ons to be purchased for load balancing vs. Azure's out-of-the-box capabilities offered for free. GCP on the surface was lower cost but the cost of running …
Features
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
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
Microsoft Azure
-
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
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloud Foundry
-
Ratings
Microsoft Azure
8.5
Ratings
6% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Small Businesses
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.7 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Cloud FoundryMicrosoft Azure
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
Actually, migrating to Microsoft Azure is a good solution for almost any situation, especially when all components of your network are ready to become cloud-based. The only drawback I personally encounter frequently is that older software packages cannot always be easily picked up and moved to Microsoft Azure in an optimal manner.
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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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  • Azure simply provides end to end life cycle. Starting from the development to automated deployment, you will find [a] bunch of options. Custom hook-points allow [integration] on-premise resources as well.
  • Excellent documentation around all the services make it really easy for any novice. Overall support by [the] community and Azure Technical team is exceptional.
  • BOT Services, Computer Vision services, ML frameworks provide excellent results as compare to similar services provided by other giants in the same space.
  • Azure data services provide excellent support to ingest data from different sources, ETL, and consumption of data for BI purpose.
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.
Read full review
  • In our experience, Azure Kubernetes Survice was difficult to set up, which is why we used Kubernetes on top of VMs.
  • Azure REST API is a bit difficult to use, which made it difficult for us to automate our interactions with Azure.
  • Azure's Web UI does a good job of showing metrics on individual VMs, but it would be great if there was a way to show certain metrics from multiple VMs on one dashboard. For example, hard drive usage on our database VMs.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
We have been very satisfied with Windows Azure and now a lot of our business depends on it as more teams are now deploying their applications into Azure. Our next step is to have our Infrastructure team move their resources to Azure. It will take awhile for that to happen but we are positive that it will.
Read full review
Usability
No answers on this topic
Microsoft Azure's overall usability has been better than expected. Often times vendors promise the world, only to leave you with a run-down town. Not the case with our experience. From an implementation perspective, all went perfect, and from the user-facing experience we have had no technical issues, just some learning curve issues that are more about "why" than "how"
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
Support is easy with all the knowledge base articles available for free on the web. Plus, if you have a preferred status you can leverage their concierge support to get rapid response. Sometimes they’ll bounce you around a lot to get you to the right person, but they are quite responsive (especially when you are paying for the service). Many of the older Microsoft skills are also transferable from old-school on-prem to Azure-based virtual interfaces.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
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.
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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
I feel that Microsoft Azure typically outperforms Google Cloud Platform in hybrid cloud capabilities, integration aspects, and, primarily, security compliance features. Azure offered superior integration with Microsoft's enterprise software ecosystem, and it's second to none in my opinion. This made it the natural choice for most, especially if heavily invested in Windows, Office 365, or Active Directory deployments. We chose Azure over GCP because we simply needed Windows workload support as a strong driver, more access to global regions, and let's not forget that most tech teams in an organization are Microsoft Certified, which makes skillset transfer from on-prem to cloud a minimal learning curve over shifting to a different provider.
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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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  • Times and growth went into it. By balancing on-premises maintenance with continuous cloud improvements, we’ve budgeted and planned endlessly increased capacity.
  • In today’s world of cyber-crime, clients can put even more faith in what they’ve heard. We built an innovative single-sign-on hub for all users. Also, other business platforms use Azure application gateways, reducing worker switching time and increasing productivity.
  • Its step can automate to improve the investment. In addition, we can integrate our organization’s credentials into an authorization for other systems.
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ScreenShots