TrustRadius Insights for IBM Cloud Foundry are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Simplicity and Quick Setup: Users have appreciated the simplicity of IBM Cloud Foundry, noting that the command line tool provided allowed them to get up and running within minutes. This ease of setup has been crucial for users who value a straightforward onboarding process.
Feature-Rich Platform: Reviewers have found IBM Cloud Foundry to be feature-rich, providing essential cloud-based platform features like auto-scaling and zero downtime deployment. The inclusion of these features has enhanced the overall user experience and functionality of the platform.
High Scalability: The high scalability of IBM Cloud Foundry was highlighted as a positive aspect by users. Being able to easily scale resources based on their needs has proven beneficial for users managing varying workloads efficiently.
IBM Cloud Foundry is the primary container deployment technology we utilize for our cloud product offerings. All our cloud applications are deployed and running with it. IBM Cloud Foundry simplifies the processes for our development and operations team, by providing a standardized packaging and deployment methodology, as well as integrating into the overall toolchain, from development to final deployment.
Pros
Simplicity - the command line tool provided can get you up and running within minutes.
Resourceful - IBM Cloud Foundry is built on top of the open source Cloud Foundry technology, so any resources you find online about Cloud Foundry generally can be applied.
Feature rich - provides all the necessary features for a cloud based platform, such as auto-scaling, 0 downtime deployment.
Cons
Documentation - most of the time, you will be referring to the open source Cloud Foundry's documentation instead.
Certificate management - this part is custom to IBM Cloud Foundry, and it does not have official APIs for you to manage SSL certificates for the various domains you might have.
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.
VU
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (Information Technology & Services company, 1-10 employees)
Recently I've built and run a web-app (trindfl.com) within IBM Cloud Foundry, which is drafting a tax declaration for interactive brokers (IBKR) traders. A user downloads her IBKR yearly activity reports (csv files), and then she uploads them to the web-app (IBM Cloud Foundry). In a few seconds the web-app, first, parses the uploaded reports, second, prepares the tax declaration file (xml), and, last, prepares an explanatory note (xlsx), which shows how IBKR report is aligned with Russian tax law. Brief analysis results are presented to the user so she can make a decision to purchase and download tax declaration and explanatory note files. All the uploaded and created files are deleted after a while.
Pros
The IBM Cloud CLI software doesn't change my laptop environment (whereas AWS CF Python CLI does).
IBM Cloud Foundry allows me to use the most recent versions of Python.
IBM Cloud Foundry easily integrates with other IBM services (e.g., DB2 service, object storage, LogDNA).
Cons
When using IBM Cloud Foundry with LogDNA, I can't filter log events based on their level (i.t. debug, info, error). Thus, LogDNA marks all the web-app log messages as 'OUT,' which is not quite useful for message filtering.
Likelihood to Recommend
When I started with prototyping five months ago, I tried IBM Cloud Foundry and AWS, but finally I preferred IBM Cloud Foundry for the reasons described bellow.
I needed to draft a system architecture, which includes Python web app, database, object storage, and API integration with external services. IBM Cloud Foundry provides me with enterprise-level production-ready solutions, which I could easily integrate and test my prototype before I made a system selection decision. Thus, I chose IBM Cloud Foundry, object storage, DB2 service, and LogDNA to proceed. In addition, many IBM services provide free trials, so I don't need to pay for testing during the stage of system selection and prototyping.
At my work place, most of the in house web solutions and client projects we built is being hosted on IBM Cloud Foundry. Its being used majorly by Engineering team which I co-managed for the firm, and I also assist in tutoring new developer on how to make use of IBM Cloud foundry and other IBM Paas or resources that will make use by the Engineering team. It provide us flexibility in hosting, which there is option for continuous delivery which can be make use when you setup continuous delivery toolchain, which I have make use when I am given role to set up the environment for a new project and a starter content for the project. Secondly, make use of terminal command to push project to IBM Cloud foundry, which I can configure the custom domain which I want to assign to particular project through my terminal. Thirdly, I can allocate max memory which my application should make use of especially when we implement Proof of Concept to pitch our idea, so i reduce it from the default 256mb to 64mb which helps to save cost and waste of cloud resources, which other applications can make use of. Fourthly, there is provision for secure and non secure subdomain url for hosted application which is very good startup at-least when sharing our POC link, investor won't be worried since we would be providing with secure url to access our ideas which in return make them trust us and give us audience.
Pros
Hassle free linking of custom domain to hosted application on IBM Cloud Foundry
Flexibility in hosting application on IBM Cloud with easy terminal command availability for all settings which is required to set up IBM Cloud Foundry instance for that project
Well detailed explainable log errors to guide the user on what is really wrong , why the application was not push to cloud or not live
Properly index error in search engine which often list IBM forums url within the top 5 when you search with keywords from the terminal log errors you copied
Availability of IBM Cloud Foundry SDK on major languages with sample implementation code for the selected language
Cons
Major improvement I think is currently needed is sponsor more seminars in tech related field because I could search and see more content on youtube compare to other IBM resources which I have to rely solely on the IBM documentation to implement it
Properly index documentation on search engine optimization on how to point Cloud Foundry Application to a host on another platform
Partner with Massive Open Online Courses like udacity to create video content on software development track with free tiers to host on the resources during learning
Have issues when the domain doesn't come with ssl certificates and I upload generate Lets encrypt ssl to the custom domain interface after I install it, the domain won't be secure . I will want you to investigate this issue
Likelihood to Recommend
Based on the application I have hosted on the IBM Cloud Foundry Platform as a Service, since I have being using it. It best use case for hosting is NodeJS applications, single page applications for professionals like MERN stack Developer, MEAN Stack Developer, JAMStack Developer, PERN Stack Developer. I am learning Flask Framework now, I will write review on that when I host it on IBM Cloud Foundry.
IBM cloud foundry is used by our IT department to mange and deploy web apps within the cloud. It is simple to manage in our staging and production process, thus we are able to focus more on development rather than managing deployments. Its salability has been able to improve our web performance.
Pros
Good Scaling
Easy to use
Variety of Languages
Cons
Not suitable for deploying large apps
The user interface needs improvement
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Cloud Foundry is good for the deployment of small applications and scales well, unlike with large apps. It is also challenging to use 3rd party apps on IBM Cloud Foundry.
We use Cloud Foundry to simply to manage our applications. Using Cloud Foundry allows us to deploy quickly and easily with no hassles. It is simple to manage multiple environments such as staging and production. Thus we are able to focus on development rather than managing deployments. Moreover, Cloud Foundry provides a good performance.
Pros
Quick setup
Easy to manage
Supports many languages
Cons
Better scalability options
More flexibility to set resources such as ram and CPU
Improve environment variables management
Likelihood to Recommend
Cloud Foundry is well suited for a web application using a monolithic architecture. It works well with a dockerized application as well.
However, Cloud Foundry is not well suited for microservices architecture applications. The pricing model of Cloud Foundry is not thought with microservices in mind.
We use IBM Cloud Foundry to deploy multiple micro services which are a part of our product offering. It the the main deployment model we use right now across our organization.
Pros
Simple deployment model
Multiple language support
Good monitoring and operational support
Cons
Better security model, the current model is coarse grained.
Likelihood to Recommend
Quick turnaround for deploying applications, it provides a language/runtime agnostic environment to deploy applications with a simple interface.
IBM Cloud Foundry is the main repository of APIs for our organization. We are migrating some we have internally already developed in loopback and developing from scratch, and some others in other frameworks. For those already in loopback, we just check that we are taking advantage of all the new features in the cloud. For the rest, we started with a new basic ground API and start reusing most of it. With this approach, we are increasing the API response time and availability and getting rid of local hardware.
Pros
Easy move from local to the cloud for web apps and APIs.
You can run IBM Cloud Foundry locally for testing.
There is a free allowance every 30 days.
Of course, you can take your apps back or move them to other kinds of hosting.
Cons
Something like a scripting way to automate start/stop your cells so you can control or divide APIs you just need for a limited time.
The pricing calculator is not considering the cost for the whole month.
The IBM SDK is now deprecated so that means your actual SDK can be supported. More clarification is required on this.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you want to start moving your apps to the Cloud, this is a good place to start because all services required for an app have an allowance level so you can try your solution and take it back if you don't like it. Considering a database and the app in IBM Cloud Foundry (CF), you have the option to improve your app with authentication services, monitoring, and some automation. And because CF supports most popular dev environments, there is a good chance that your app is able to be moved to the cloud.
We were part of the IBM Global Entrepreneur program and were given the opportunity to use Bluemix or SoftLayer. We made an attempt to use Bluemix for a few small applications when were were dabbling with rebuilding the platform Meteor. If it worked out it would have been the main platform for the production distribution of the web application.
Pros
Bluemix makes it really easy to deploy new applications; they give you a good starting point and try to walk you through the process until its time to write or deploy your code.
They also offer basically everything you could need for your infrastructure in one spot, which is super valuable. This was an attractive option for us.
They support all of the most popular languages and frameworks, JS, Ruby, etc... and have a lot of boilerplate apps to get you started.
It significantly reduces the amount of DevOps work.
Cons
When we used it, it was super buggy which didn't instill very much confidence in the platform.
It seems kind of 'black boxy' like we didn't feel like we had much control over the system, so we were always kind of skeptical of the magic going on behind the scenes and how secure it was.
There is not very much interfacing outside of the IBM ecosystem. We we felt pressured to use their version control management and the task management tools Bluemix provided when we were experimenting with it.
Likelihood to Recommend
I would definitely recommend it for prototypes and, if it seems to work well, maybe in some working environments and production. When I was using it I definitely only would have recommended it for raid prototyping.
It ran our entire backend functionality. It is used across the entire organization and its impact is seen on every one of our customers. We used it to try to simplify our deployments, as they took a lot of time out of our day.
Pros
Large collection of tools to integrate with.
Growing application support.
Bluemix has the ability to scale easily from very small to very large.
Cons
Applications that were integrated had a feeling like they came from very different companies and organizations.
Logins had to be performed often between different services, once a week the applications would change and we had to learn a different way to do the logins.
Branding is important, but the names, like "Jazz" would get in the way of what the application did for us. So new developers would have to learn 5-6 new special websites just to do a single deployment. And one or two new changes a month to keep up with it.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is suited to large businesses with somebody specifically in charge of deployments. He would be a person specifically paid to take care of all the machines through the Bluemix service. It is not a good situation when the teams are small, such as a three-person development team, because there is considerable maintenance that must be taught between them, and this costs a bit of time and hence money in that situation.
For the past year I've run a personal website on auto-pilot that runs a few thousand API calls per month against IBM Watson Alchemy APIs. Hourly, I fetch articles from HackerNews, and feed the subject line to Watson API so it will auto-categorize them for me. Users of my website are then able to browse articles that are more relevant to their interests.
Pros
IBM Bluemix provides a wealth of powerful APIs. The ones I tried were easy to use and required minimal training to get up to speed.
I'd rate the documentation 9/10 as it was easy to navigate, had good examples and explained most of the possible inputs/outputs.
Cons
The IBM Bluemix interface itself was horrendous. Performance is a feature, especially for a platform as pricey as Bluemix. Please cure the sluggishness so it's actually useable.
Billing details could be improved so it's easier to figure out how much I'm paying and why.
Worst customer support I've ever seen. With multiple tickets, I never heard a response. Despite being a paying customer!
Likelihood to Recommend
For low throughput scenarios, you can get really useful data with little effort, especially when building multiple applications. For high throughput use cases, I would suggest redesigning your product to work around the really high price point of IBM Watson. Under no circumstances would I recommend IBM Bluemix as a hosting provider in contrast to AWS or Azure.
VU
Verified User
Program Manager in Corporate (Computer Software company, 1-10 employees)
