Magic xpa Application Platform vs. Mirantis Kubernetes Engine

In our experience, the product performs really well when interfacing systems with ERP's through SQL server database tables, but we've even made some interfaces with the web service functionality included with the magic xpi integration platform. Also, we've made some SAP Business One - SAP Business One interfaces, for copying information from one company to another and even between two different ERP systems.

Incentivized

Docker is great for when you would want to use a VM for any given application, but don't need the overhead of the whole OS. Docker containers use very little computing resources, boot up very quickly, and are very easy to set up. An instance where Docker may not be appropriate would be for an application that requires good security. If in this situation, a true VM would probably be your best bet.

Incentivized

• The UI is really simple to use, you have source/destination mapping for the items.
• The scheduler gives you a lot of options when executing the models.
• The error handling is usually pretty good and the errors can be corrected fast.

Incentivized

• Containerization - allowing multiple micro-services to function together without in-depth orchestration at the VM level.
• Rapid deployment - a developer with appropriate access can simply push to the correct remote and the deploy happens automatically from there
• Decouples provisioning from VM administration - allows containers to be deployed (more) regardless of VM set up.

Incentivized

• Although the scenarios may be online, the main service usually freezes and the processes can't transact any data. With a single restart of the service, the processes will be functioning again.
• The support for more applications would be nice, even though there is a nice number of them. Most of the main applications in the market are supported.
• The licensing for the software may be a little confusing; you can't buy individual licenses as they come in packages of four.

Incentivized

• Docker has a bit of a learning curve, and it takes some time to become familiar with the tooling and syntax. Transitioning an existing architecture to docker can represent a significant investment.
• Docker attempts to provide some level of cross-host container orchestration via swarm, but it falls short of third-party solutions like kubernetes.
• We occasionally run into stability issues when the docker daemon is subjected to high load (many applications starting/stopping frequently). In these cases, docker hangs and we have to restart or replace the node.

Incentivized

Docker's CLI has a lot of options, and they aren't all intuitive. And there are so many tools in the space (Docker Compose, Docker Swarm, etc) that have their own configuration as well. So while there is a lot to learn, most concepts transfer easily and can be learned once and applied across everything.

Incentivized

The community support for Docker is fantastic. There is almost always an answer for any issue I might encounter day-to-day, either on Stack Overflow, a helpful blog post, or the community Slack workspace. I've never come across a problem that I was unable to solve via some searching around in the community.

Incentivized

Honestly, we have only used and evaluated magic xpi/xpa platforms because of the recommendation of our SAP Business One main supplier, who has previously used the platform for their developments. So far, we have no regrets with the acquisition of the platform and we are very happy with its performance.

Incentivized

I have not used any other software as a container management solution. Its containerized apps allow the usage of less memory, thus
they start and shut down very fast. This tool is helping the enterprise
software to work quickly against the changing conditions thus offers great
scaling by simultaneously allowing me to meet the demands, which also leads to
easy implementation of the strategies.

Incentivized

• The implementation time for this kind of projects has been greatly reduced.
• Certifying an In-House resource in the Magix xpi and xpa platforms is probably the best option, considering all of the projects that can be developed in the future without the need of an external consultant.
• The processes that have been automatized with the Magic xpi platform helped reduce human error and the time those processes took to finish.

Incentivized

• We are able to try things very quickly compared to before. If you need to debug it, changes on X/Y/Z will have an impact on the way your app works, and changing libraries or configurations of the environment easily can improve your development cycles.
• In case someone new arrives, the onboarding is pretty easy thanks to Docker. We have tried many configs and images until we reached a point were we have what we want. We don't have to painfully do that again for every new user. We just send him the image.

Incentivized