A PEEK INTO WHAT REAL USERS THINK - CIO Summits PEEK INTO WHAT REAL USERS THINK ... Cordys Cordys...

PaaS

A PEEK INTO WHAT REAL USERS THINK

2015

IT Central Station helps tech professionals by providing...

A comprehensive list ofenterprise level PaaS

vendors.

A sample of real userreviews from tech

professionals.

Specific information to helpyou choose the best vendor

for your needs.

Disclaimer

IT Central Station Ltd. does not endorse or recommend any products or services. The views and opinions of reviewersquoted in this document, IT Central Station websites, and IT Central Station materials (i.e. Content) do not reflect the

opinions of IT Central Station. We make no guarantees about the accuracy, currency, suitability, or quality of the content, andwe assume no responsibility for unintended, objectionable, inaccurate, misleading, or unlawful content made available by

Content authors or other third parties.

© 2015 IT Central Station Reproduction ProhibitedTo read more reviews about PaaS, please visit:http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/paas

http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/paas

ABOUT IT CENTRAL STATION

User reviews, candid discussions, and more for enterprise technologyprofessionals.The Internet has completely changed the way we makebuying decisions. We now use ratings and review sitesto see what other real users think before we buyelectronics, book a hotel, visit a doctor or choose arestaurant. But in the world of enterprise technology,most of the information online and in your inbox comesfrom vendors but what you really want is objectiveinformation from other users.

We created IT Central Station to providetechnology professionals like you with acommunity platform to share information aboutenterprise software, applications, hardware andservices.

We commit to offering user-contributed information thatis valuable, objective and relevant. We protect yourprivacy by providing an environment where you canpost anonymously and freely express your views. As aresult, the community becomes a valuable resource,ensuring you get access to the right information andconnect to the right people, whenever you need it.

Use IT Central Station to:

• Read and post reviews of vendors and products• Request or share information about functionality, quality, and pricing• Contact real users with relevant product experience• Get immediate answers to questions• Validate vendor claims• Exchange tips for getting the best deals with vendors

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ABOUT THIS REPORT

This report is comprised of a comprehensive list of enterprise level server virtualization softwarevendors. We have also included several real user reviews posted on ITCentralStation.com. Thereviewers of these products have been validated as real users based on their LinkedIn profiles to ensurethat they provide reliable opinions and not those of product vendors.

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Did you find this whitepaper helpful? At IT Central Station, our philosophy is “Give to Get”. Our activecommunity and unbiased reviews are made possible by your participation and as such, we ask that youshare your expertise with us as well. Please email [email protected] and one of ourcommunity managers will be in touch with you shortly. You can choose to review anonymously or notand your company name will not be included in the review.

If you found this report and/or the reviews on IT Central Station useful, we would greatly appreciate yourparticipation in giving back to our community.


VENDOR (BY RANKING) SOLUTION

Microsoft Azure Rating: 8.12(59 reviews)

Amazon Amazon AWS Rating: 8.9(54 reviews)

Heroku Heroku Rating: 8.0(36 reviews)

Google Google App Engine Rating: 7.34(19 reviews)

Rackspace Rackspace Cloud Rating: 9.0(25 reviews)

salesforce.com Salesforce1 Platform Rating: 10.0(13 reviews)

Engine Yard Engine Yard Cloud (6 reviews)

Pramati Technologies WaveMaker (5 reviews)

Jelastic Jelastic Rating: 8.0(2 reviews)

IBM SmartCloud Application Services (4 reviews)

eApps eApps (2 reviews)

Mendix Mendix (3 reviews)

OrangeScape OrangeScape PaaS Cloud (1 reviews)

TIBCO TIBCO Silver (3 reviews)

Acquia Acquia

CenturyLink AppFog

AT&T AT&T Platform as a Service

BitRefinery BitRefinery

Caspio Caspio (1 reviews)

Claris Networks Claris Cloud


http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/microsoft

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/azure

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/amazon

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/amazon-aws

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/heroku

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/heroku

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/google

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/google-app-engine

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/rackspace

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/rackspace-cloud

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/salesforce-com

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/salesforce1-platform

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/engine-yard

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/engine-yard-cloud

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/pramati-technologies

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/wavemaker

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/jelastic

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/jelastic

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/ibm

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/smartcloud-application-services

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/eapps

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/eapps

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/mendix

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/mendix

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/orangescape

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/orangescape-paas-cloud

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/tibco

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/tibco-silver

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/acquia

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/acquia

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/centurylink

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/appfog

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/at-t

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/at-t-platform-as-a-service

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/bitrefinery

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/bitrefinery

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/caspio

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/caspio

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/claris-networks

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/claris-cloud

CloudSigma CloudSigma

Cordys Cordys PaaS

Google Google Compute Engine

IIJ GIO IIJ GIO PaaS Cloud

interCloud interCloud

Internap Network Services Internap Cloud

Konfigure Konfigure

Software AG LongJump PaaS Cloud

Oracle Oracle Cloud Platform

Peer 1 Peer 1

Software AG Process Live

Progress Rollbase

Corent Technology SurPaaS

Teklinks Teklinks

Tier 3 Tier 3 (2 reviews)

WorkXpress WorkXpress


http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/cloudsigma

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/cloudsigma

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/cordys

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/cordys-paas

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/google

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/google-compute-engine

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/iij-gio

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/iij-gio-paas-cloud

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/intercloud

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/intercloud

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/internap-network-services

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/internap-cloud

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/konfigure

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/konfigure

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/software-ag

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/longjump-paas-cloud

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/oracle

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/oracle-cloud-platform

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/peer-1

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/peer-1

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/software-ag

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/process-live

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/progress

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/rollbase

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/corent-technology

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/surpaas

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/teklinks

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/teklinks

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/tier-3

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/tier-3

http://www.itcentralstation.com/vendors/workxpress

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/workxpress

PaaS

According to the IT Central Station community, security is the most important criteria when selecting aPlatform as a Service (PaaS) cloud. PaaS clouds vary in the level of abstraction they provide theirconsumers. There are trades off between efficiency and control over the application. Other keyconsiderations are: the degree to which it will integrate seamlessly with the rest of the enterpriseplatform, the speed and resilience of internetworking, and the extent to which the platform is undercontrol for configuration purposes. Read more »


Top PaaS Vendors

Over 76,438 professionals have used IT Central Station research on enterprise tech solutions. Here arethe top PaaS vendors based on product reviews, ratings, and comparisons. All reviews and ratings arefrom real users, validated by our triple authentication process.

1. Amazon AWS 19533 Views8736 Comparisons

26 Reviews1589 Followers

Average Rating: 9.0

2. Azure 14153 Views9405 Comparisons


Average Rating: 8.2

3. Heroku 20441 Views9081 Comparisons


Average Rating: 8.0

4. Google App Engine 11552 Views4653 Comparisons


Average Rating: 7.4

Chart KeyViews: Number of total page views

Comparisons: Number of times compared to another product

Reviews: Total number of reviews on IT Central Station

Followers: Number of followers on IT Central Station

Average Rating: Average rating based on reviews

The total ranking of a product (i.e. bar length) is based on a weighted aggregate ranking of that product's Views (weighting factor =17.5%), Comparisons (17.5%), Reviews (17.5%), Followers (17.5%), and Average Rating (30%).© 2015 IT Central Station Reproduction Prohibited

To read more reviews about PaaS, please visit:http://www.itcentralstation.com/category/paas





TOP 5Based on Views

20441 Heroku

19533 Amazon AWS

14153 Azure

11987 Salesforce1 Platform

11552 Google App Engine

TOP 5Based on Views of Comparisons

9405 Azure

9081 Heroku

8736 Amazon AWS

7152 Rackspace Cloud


TOP 5Based on Followers

1764 Rackspace Cloud

1641 Heroku

1589 Amazon AWS

1508 Azure


TOP 5Based on Rating

10.0 Salesforce1 Platform

9.0 Amazon AWS

9.0 Rackspace Cloud

8.2 Azure

8.0 Heroku






















AzureVendor: Microsoft

Overview: Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform where developers can create, deploy, and maintain theirapps. This cloud application platform allows developers to concentrate on the actual applications, while ittakes care of all the elements behind the apps.

Windows Azure offers open across multiple frameworks,languages, and tools. It is fully scalable, localizedin that it is hosted globally in many datacenters, and has widespread capabilities are, catering for allelements of application development, deployment, and management.

Azure is comprised of several different service modules,including Infrastructure; Web; Mobile; Dev & Test;Big Data; Media;Storage, Backup & Recovery; and Identity & Access Management.

SampleCustomers:

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.

PricingInformation:

Pay As You Go - No upfront payment required. No commitment, can cancel at any time.

Windows Azure pricing based on usage.

6-Months pay monthly

- Save up to 27% as compared to Pay As You Go plan. There is also an additional discount if you prepayfor the 6 month period.

Minimum payment of $500 per month.

12-Months pay monthly

- Savings of up to 29.5% as compared to Pay As You Go plan. There is also an additional discount if youprepay for the 12 month period.

Windows Azure pricing beginning at $500 per month.

Support Options

- Have access to support expertise with one of the flexible support plans.

� Price is dependent on the support plan selected

TopComparisons:*

Heroku vs. AzureRackspace Cloud vs. AzureAmazon AWS vs. Azure

Compared 31% of the time.Compared 15% of the time.Compared 12% of the time.


http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/heroku_vs_azure

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/rackspace-cloud_vs_azure

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/amazon-aws_vs_azure

Top Industries:* Media CompanyFinancial Services FirmTransportation CompanyTech Company

11%10%9%9%

Company Size:* 1-500 Employees500-5000 Employees5000+ Employees

17%34%50%

* Data is based on the aggregate profiles of IT Central Station Users researching this solution.


WHAT REAL USERSARE SAYING...

"Implementation is simplebut anything to do withreferencing otherpackages is simplyfrustrating"

"Learning curve to get it upand running but it'sscalable and flexible."

"The management consoleneeds work but we wouldnot be building theHealthcare IT application ifit were not for Azure."

"Easy to connect to on-premise infrastructure, butdeprovisioning services iscomplicated and SLA isnot competitive"

"We moved our accountingdatabase from an in-houseSQL Server to MS Azurecloud and saw a significantincrease in performance."

"Good for runningMicrosoft EnterpriseApplications, although apricey alternative to otherIaaS/Paas serviceproviders in the market."

AZURE REVIEW BY A REAL USERUriel Maimon Verified by IT Central StationOwner at a tech consulting company with 1-500 employees

Valuable Features:

The ability to kick start a new web application or website and having them up andrunning in matter of minutes still amazes me.

Improvements to My Organization:

Deploying new release for existing web applications has now become a matter ofright clicking the name of the project and clicking ‘publish’, the same activity beforemight have been done in hours to days – depending on the complexity for the app.

Room for Improvement:

Anything to do with referencing other packages is simply frustrating, this is mostly aproblem with the Windows framework and not the hosting service, but it is still themost time consuming and irritating thing about using ASP.NET

Previous Solutions:

Yes, well back in the days we used to install physical servers, then we went tomanually virtual servers, that to hosted virtual server, then to Amazon machinesand now switched to Windows Azure.

Initial Setup:

As simple as can be.

Implementation Team:

We do all technical work in house and with Azure there was really no need forexternal assistance.

Setup Cost:

When starting out I became member of the BizSpark program so the initial cost was0 (FREE!), on customer’s projects the cost can go from $50 to $200 per monthwhich is really cost effective for them.

Alternate Solutions:

Yes for every project we will compare Azure with Amazon, with virtual servers witha physical server. But in almost every case choosing Azure will be a no brainer.


AZURE REVIEW BY A REAL USERSrEngineer672 Verified by IT Central StationConsultant at a tech services company with 1-500employees

Valuable Features:

Scalability, affordability and the flexibility of the product.


You can off-site required services to help mitigate risk

You can take advantage of the scalability to have short term high intensiveprocesses be used by their services

You can totally take away the need for any server hardware in your organisation


Probably the 2 main areas where things could be improved are getting directconsole access to VM's and its Azure backup solution to add backup types (egSystem State).

Use of Solution:

3 months

Deployment Issues:

We went with the volume license of credits and still find it difficult to activate thosecredits as there is a particular website you have to go to.

Stability Issues:

There has been documented issues with stability, however we did not experience it.

Scalability Issues:

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

Good, I can shoot email questions and get responses in a good amount of time.


Technical Support:

I haven't had to raise a technical support for Azure though for Office 365 I have andI've found it excellent.

Previous Solutions:

We looked at AWS, a locally based cloud provider and a datacentre.

Initial Setup:

It was a learning curve to get it up and running. If I had prior training I would havefound it straight forward but the time lines for implementation meant I had to "divein".


In-house

ROI:

We are able to provide services to clients that allows us get a good ROI once wehave deployed Azure to them.

Setup Cost:

Setup cost with Azure is minimal for what they are supplying. Everything takes lessthan 10 minutes to deploy.

Day to Day costs is what you use, we can now review those costs and look at thenew features (Automation) to make those costs even more efficient.


We looked at AWS, a locally based cloud provider and a datacentre.

Other Advice:

Get onboard with Microsoft and the Azure team and listen out to their partnertraining. They did a big Azure for IT Pros via their channel 9 msdn a few weeksago. There is plenty of webinars and e-books which will teach you what you want toknow.


Amazon AWSVendor: Amazon

Overview: Amazon Web Services (AWS) covers all your business-centered needs from start to finish, and now theyhave added another layer of convenience to the experience the EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is aninnovative concept that lets businesses flexibly increase or decrease the amount of storage and processingwith ease. The service includes all aspects of a business model including computing information, storingfiles and other database services, but the most convenient aspect of this option is that EC2 allows you topay as you go. If you use less than the amount of cloud space you ordered,you will only be charged for thepercentage you have used; if you go over, you'll simply be charged for the excess at a standard rate.

SampleCustomers:

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.

PricingInformation:

General Purpose Current Generation -

Upfront Cost: $516 USD/$1032 USD

Hourly Cost: $0.428 USD per hour/$0.857 USD per hour

General Purpose Previous Generation -

Upfront Cost: $69-$552 USD (depending on size)

Hourly Cost: $0.059-$0.47 USD per hour

GPU Instances Current Generation -

Upfront Cost: $925 USD

Hourly Cost: $0.599 per hour

TopComparisons:*

Azure vs. Amazon AWSRackspace Cloud vs. Amazon AWSHeroku vs. Amazon AWS


Top Industries:* Media CompanyTransportation CompanyFinancial Services FirmComms Service Provider

20%14%9%8%


http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/azure_vs_amazon-aws

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/rackspace-cloud_vs_amazon-aws

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/heroku_vs_amazon-aws


25%34%41%




"An amazing platform tobuild on but IAM policies,and cross account accessneeds improvement."

"The product is simple andcan be learned with onlinedocumentation."

"The technical support wasa 7 on a scale of 1-10, butdynamic usage andflexibility."

"Great platform to spin upservers in minutes;provides multiple tools foradministrators; UI can bepuzzling sometimes"

"We have been able toleverage the agility ofAmazon to work faster.AWS's customer service isridiculously good."

"Great for experimentingwith different setups androlling out solutionseffectively but monitoringcould be better"

AMAZON AWS REVIEW BY A REAL USERGeorge Khairallah Verified by IT Central StationChief Technology Officer at a tech services company with1-500 employees

Valuable Features:

The whole IaaS model is an invaluable service. The ease of deployment,maintenance, and scalability, and pay as you go model make AWS an amazingplatform to build on.


AWS sitting at the core of our service, and we have been able to provide anamazing number of features, that were otherwise very expensive, and laborintensive to put in place, these include high availability, business continuityplanning, disaster recovery, among others.


AWS has an amazing feature set but I have not used all of them to be able to havea well rounded opinion about improvement. However, of the features I have used, Iwould say IAM policies, and cross account access would probably be one of themain areas of improvement. Amazon is working on a "

Service Catalog

" which could potentially fill some of these holes.

Use of Solution:

I've used it for three years.

Deployment Issues:

Surprisingly, since starting to use AWS, the process has been quite simple. Thedeployment was very smooth. Despite this, it does take a bit of getting used towhen working with VPCs, and networking in an AWS context, but that's a fairlyquick learning curve that can be attained easily.

Stability Issues:

Like anything, failures happen every once in a while. I have experienced somefailed hardware under my instances, which caused a brief outage. The stability ofthe service, however, is also much more reliant on the architecture of theapplication than the stability of the AWS infrastructure. In any case, AWS has beenquite stable over all.


Scalability Issues:

Scalability is one of AWS' strengths. Scaling resources, be it an AWS EC2instance, or an RDS instance is a snap. Also, scaling into multiple geographicregions in the world is also possible, and quite a realistic view in that environment.

Customer Service:

My experience with AWS customer service has been stellar. Everyone I come intocontact with from Sales, to Technical Support are always friendly, and courteous.

Technical Support:

The technical support team is quite knowledgeable, and there is no question askedthat doesn't get addressed with full attention, complete with references, examples,and a recap of conversations that were conducted.

Their technical support processes are clearly well thought out. I can always knowwhat communication to expect, and the level of help that I can expect to receive. Ihave yet to call them on an issue where a resolution wasn't reached on the first orsecond contact.

Previous Solutions:

Previously, I used co-location services. The reason I switched is quite obvious:

Cost

Constant overheads

Constant challenge of meeting budgets with consistent cutting edge technology

AWS has removed all these variables, and allowed me to concentrate on growingmy services without having to worry about aging servers, or under capacityhardware, etc.

Initial Setup:

Understanding AWS is actually quite easy. There are some notions that require abit of previous knowledge to grasp. The good news is that the documentationavailable about the different services is quite extensive, which can give anyone ahead start in launching their AWS services. The complexity of using AWS is directlyrelated to the robustness of the application/service that is being deployed. Themore AWS services are integrated together, the more complex the deployment willbecome.


All AWS services were deployed in-house, with assistance from AWS supportteams.


ROI:

Because there is no initial investment in AWS services (it's a pay as you go servicein its basic form) the ROI is immediate. Because AWS costs are consistently beingreduced, it is a great way to build services, offered at affordable prices, while stillgetting good returns on investment.

Setup Cost:

As mentioned above, AWS does not really have initial setup costs. It's like a utilitycompany; you use the service, and pay for your usage. The daily cost is dependentupon the service being deployed at that point in time. For the flexibility, andconsistent cutting edge technology that AWS operates on, it's well worth the price.


I have evaluated Azure, and Google as IaaS. Quite honestly, Google was tooconvoluted for my purposes, and although Azure had some nice "Microsoft-y"features that AWS doesn't necessarily have, I still felt that it was much easier to getstarted with AWS, than it is with the other services.

Other Advice:

Don't be afraid of "The Cloud". As prominent as it is today, a lot of people, and smallbusinesses, are still afraid of storing their data away from their physical office.There are a ton of advantages in using AWS for your infrastructure instead of on-premises equipment. Give it a serious look before dismissing it. There is a lot thatcan be added here, but that could be an article all on its own.


AMAZON AWS REVIEW BY A REAL USERDeepika Verified by IT Central StationSalesforce/Amazon/AWS Trainer at a tech consultingcompany with 1-500 employees

Valuable Features:

EC2, EBS, Security, and RDS services are all good.


Currently I'm using the product for learning purposes.

Use of Solution:

I have used if for over a year.

Deployment Issues:


Stability Issues:


Scalability Issues:

Not yet.

Customer Service:

Very nice.

Technical Support:

Very good.

Previous Solutions:

Yes I used Microsoft Azure but it only provides a free trial for one month. Thisduration is not sufficient to learn cloud services. Hence I switched to AWS asAmazon provides AWS cloud as a free trial for one year. That is an ample amountof time to grasp the cloud concepts and gain hands-on experience.



The product is simple and can be learned with online documentation.

ROI:

Very convenient.


HerokuVendor: Heroku

Overview: Established in 2007, Heroku is a cloud application platform providing a streamlined, efficient place for webapp developers to create and deploy their applications. Heroku is designed to maximize developerproductivity. With the entire web application development process available on the Herokucloud, creatingand rolling out web apps has been made more efficient, convenient, and cost-effective than ever before.

SampleCustomers:

Facebook, UrbanDictionary, Code for America, Mailchimp, Rapportive, GitHub, TED, and Lyft.

PricingInformation:

1x (512MB RAM, 1x CPU Share) - $0.05/dyno-hour

2x (1024MB RAM, 2x CPU Share) - $0.10/dyno-hour

TopComparisons:*

Azure vs. HerokuGoogle App Engine vs. HerokuRackspace Cloud vs. Heroku


Top Industries:* Financial Services FirmMarketing Services FirmComms Service ProviderNon Profit

13%7%7%6%


41%16%43%



http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/azure_vs_heroku

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/google-app-engine_vs_heroku

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/rackspace-cloud_vs_heroku


"Good host for nodejs, butnot the cheapest solution"

"Amazing platform, poorcustomer service"

"Easy and fast, but slowrestart and pricey."

HEROKU REVIEW BY A REAL USERRenan LE CARO Verified by IT Central StationDeveloper at a tech services company with 5000+employees

Valuable Features:

Deploying with git, npm install git hook ... basically, they got it right for nodejsservers hosting. Free trials is limited (1 app running at a time) but good enough fora proof of concept. Using an Heroku backend and a GithHub pages front endserving static content, I can scale my app for free to a reasonable level.


Plugins aren't cheap (Mailchimp is $1.5/1000 emails).

Use of Solution:

6 months

Technical Support:

The doc is good, for nodejs at least. It is newbies friendly.

Previous Solutions:

I rejected Google app engine for there lack of nodejs support, and AWS for thecomplexity of setting up a simple app.

Initial Setup:

The CLI tools are good and deployment is quick. The web control panel ain't thatgreat, I got into trouble trying to launch my app.

Setup Cost:

0 for now :)


HEROKU REVIEW BY A REAL USERDeryk Wenaus Verified by IT Central StationCEO at a tech services company with 1-500 employees

Valuable Features:

Lots of integrations

Use of Solution:

1 year

Stability Issues:

I had an issue recently where my site was down intermittently for unknown reasons.I posted a ticket and 5 days have gone by without any resolution. I'm surprised atthis total lack of customer service.

Customer Service:

So far very very poor. I'm considering switching to another platform for only thisreason. How can a startup scale a business with such poor support. 5+ days noresponse to a valid ticket!

Technical Support:

Horrible because they take forever to respond. Days with no response.

Initial Setup:

The setup was pretty good.


Google App EngineVendor: Google

Overview: Google App Engine is a Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) provider that equips web application developers withall the resources and tools that they need to develop, test, and run their applications on Google'sinfrastructure. Everything is built into the kit, so with one download of the SDK, you'll be well on your way tofirst-rate apps.

SampleCustomers:

Khan Academy, Best Buy, Gigya, MetOffice, Getaround, Mimiboard, NewsLimited, WebFilings, andCloudLock.

PricingInformation:

The Google App Engine pricing and product model is all about scalability. Users start out with 1GB of freedata storage and traffic, but this can be increased by activating paid applications. Once you do this, you'llbe able to exceed these free quotas and will pay for the additional usage. You'll set a daily limit for the extraresources used so that you do not exceed your budget. Additional resources are billed at a fixed unit rate.Instance hours are an exception as they can also be purchased on a retainer basis, whereby you buy a setnumber of instance hours per week at a discount. There is also a Premier option, which unlocks all toolsand resources and this option starts at $150 per account per month.

TopComparisons:*

Heroku vs. Google App EngineRackspace Cloud vs. Google App EngineAzure vs. Google App Engine


Top Industries:* Financial Services FirmMedia CompanyTransportation CompanyPharma/Biotech Company

19%11%10%7%


22%33%45%



http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/heroku_vs_google-app-engine

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/rackspace-cloud_vs_google-app-engine

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/azure_vs_google-app-engine


"Easy to upload from IDE...."

"Overall a good and cheapplatform with scalabilitysupport. Good forindividuals and startups,but not suitable forheavy/large applications."

"A good applicationhosting option for shortterm, low budget startups"

GOOGLE APP ENGINE REVIEW BY A REAL USERRajeev@4circles Verified by IT Central StationVP of Development at a tech consulting company with 1-500 employees

Valuable Features:

Easy to upload from IDE.


Need a better documentation and tech support.


GOOGLE APP ENGINE REVIEW BY A REAL USERTechie Verified by IT Central StationDeveloper at a software R&D company with 5000+employees

Valuable Features:

- A very good platform for those applications that store something and retrieve itback.

- Google takes care of deploying the code to the clusters, monitoring, failover, andlaunching application instances as and when necessary. This takes a lot of theadministrative work off the user.

- Easy and cheaper (in the short term)

- Unlimited scalabity to your application, and scales with demand.

- GAE supports MySQL db as well.

- App Engine doesn't provide you with the flexibility to use an equivalent service ifyou need to pick something else for your app.


- Developers have read-only access to the filesystem on the Google App Engine.

- GAE is not suitable for CPU intensive calculations.

- You cannot produce a social graph using Google app engine.

- Once you think of migrating out of the AppEngine world, you'll face a lot ofproblems. For example, having to change your code to use your own datastore,task queues, and other services. If your application is fairly large, this will be a verydifficult process.

- Since the backend is completely manage by Google, you don't have control overthe environment your application runs in.

- Apart from the free space and to build some "Hobby" websites, Google AppEngine is not the place java guys should look in as Java is quite heavy on memoryfront.

Other Advice:

Overall a good platform for running small applications that basically deals withstoring and retrieving data from backend. Since the backend is handled by Google,you get a scalable app platform, but at the cost of losing control over the backendenvironment. You cannot tweak the backend and you just have to leave withwhatever Google has to offer.


Rackspace CloudVendor: Rackspace

Overview: Rackspace is a listed company that specializes in hybrid cloud environments to support your applicationsand sites. The environments are based on its open-source operating system OpenStack.Rackspace Cloudcaters for the private cloud, public cloud, dedicated servers, or a hybrid of platforms.

Your Rackspace Cloud environment is customizable according to your cloud requirements, and allproducts work together seamlessly from one portal.

SampleCustomers:

3D Capacity, Acquity Group, Axios Systems, Behance, Blastro, Dominos Pizza, and Sage.

PricingInformation:

Rackspace Cloud Servers - Rackspace Cloud pricing is on a per minute basis. Managed Cloud ServiceLevel is available for $100 per month and with a higher per minute rate. Starts at $29.20 per month.

Rackspace Cloud Block Storage - Standard Volumes: $0.12/GB/month (minimum $12/month for100GB). SSD Volumes: $0.50/GB/month (minimum $50/month for 100GB).

Rackspace Cloud Files - Pay-as-you-grow, tiered pricing according to total TB required. Starts at10c/GB/month.

Rackspace Cloud Backup - Infrastructure service level _ base price is $10/month/server +$0.10/GB/month + bandwidth starting at $0.12/GB. Managed Cloud Service Level _ standard pricing plus$100 monthly fee.

Rackspace Cloud Databases - Billed per hour based on instance size. Starts at $36.50/month.Infrastructure Service Level or Managed Cloud Service Level options available.

Rackspace Cloud Big Data Platform -

1.3TB Storage _ $0.37/hour ($270.10/month minimum). 11.0TB Storage _ $2.96/hour ($2,160.80/monthminimum).

Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers - Per Instance _ $10.95/month ($0.015/hour, billed per minute). ORPer Instance with SSL _$36.50/month ($0.05/hour, billed per minute). + 100 Concurrent Connections _$10.95/month ($0.015/hour, billed per minute).

Rackspace Cloud DNS - Free

Rackspace Cloud Networks - Free

Rackspace Cloud Queues -

1 million free API requests/month. Then pay $0.01 per 10,000 API requests.

Rackspace Cloud Monitoring -

Five monitoring zones and pricing is based on the zone. Starts at $1.50/month.


TopComparisons:*

Azure vs. Rackspace CloudHeroku vs. Rackspace CloudAmazon AWS vs. Rackspace Cloud


Top Industries:* Financial Services FirmMarketing Services FirmComms Service ProviderMedia Company

14%13%11%7%


20%27%53%



http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/azure_vs_rackspace-cloud

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/heroku_vs_rackspace-cloud

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/amazon-aws_vs_rackspace-cloud


"Reliable Service, lots ofchange"

"The new generation ofRackspace Cloud serversstrong improvement overthe first generation."

RACKSPACE CLOUD REVIEW BY A REAL USERpatent_tech Verified by IT Central StationVP of Product at a legal firm with 1-500 employees

Valuable Features:

Ability to quickly create reliable virtual servers. We've moved everything from gen 1servers to new performance images. The performance flash drive based serversare very fast and have nice options for adding disk space. Cloud files have provento be fast and reliable for us.


I wouldn't recommend adopting the first version of any of their new products. Butonce the bugs are worked out the services are robust and reliable.

It would be a bonus if they could automatically move around virtual machines in aclustered environment. We've had several problems where another host on ashared machine is getting a denial of service or overloading the server and thatimpacts our instance. In that case they have no way of moving you to a differentbase server, you either have to create a replacement server or wait for the problemto be resolved.

Use of Solution:

Five years

Stability Issues:

Solution has generally been quite stable with only a few issues over the years.

Scalability Issues:

The cloud load balancer product was a much needed system. Prior to that we hadto create our own load balancer on a virtual server. Initially the cloud load balancerwas not very stable but they've worked through the issues and it's much better. Now it's pretty easy to add in additional servers behind the load balancer if youneed scalability.

Customer Service:

All of the marketing is about fanatical service but in practice it's very hard to live upto those expectations. Most rackers are friendly and try to be very helpful.


Technical Support:

It's often difficult to get timely support with a ticket, they seem to live by phone callsthere. Many times you'll get a tech who runs through a checklist and sometimes cansolve your problem. You can usually get escalation if the issue is severe or reallyneeds help. I've found the service monitors you can set up through the controlpanel are often ignored by tech support as just noise. If you need support, yougenerally need to call them.

Other Advice:

We're using their managed operations - sysops currently and have used themanaged service for several years. This is a good way to reduce the need for in-house system admin skills and time but in practice this hasn't eliminated the needto have our own staff monitor this area. I like the idea of Rackspace managing thesysops side of the app but they probably need a better way to transfer knowledgeto their team. It's very generic support by default.


RACKSPACE CLOUD REVIEW BY A REAL USERreviewer6207 Verified by IT Central StationDirector of eCommerce at a retailer with 1-500 employees

Valuable Features:

The new generation of Rackspace Cloud servers are a strong improvement overthe first generation. Performance is improved significantly, and the new dashboardgives managers more information.


I feel that the managed services Rackspace is known for have fallen off a bit. I hada few instances where techs on off hours made extremely bad decisions, resultingin extended site outages lasting hours. Make sure techs are fully trained.


Salesforce1 PlatformVendor: salesforce.com

TopComparisons:*

Azure vs. Salesforce1 PlatformRackspace Cloud vs. Salesforce1 PlatformAmazon AWS vs. Salesforce1 Platform




http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/azure_vs_salesforce1-platform

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/rackspace-cloud_vs_salesforce1-platform

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/amazon-aws_vs_salesforce1-platform


"Fits Agile developmentmodel and easy to use, buthas its issues."

SALESFORCE1 PLATFORM REVIEW BY A REAL USEREric Dirst Verified by IT Central StationPresident, Online Services at a university with 5000+employees

Valuable Features:

Fast speed to delivery of new solutions; fits Agile development model; easyintegration and mashup with other SaaS/PaaS offerings; combination ofconfiguration and coding; easy to learn and get up-to-speed quickly for developers;no waiting for hardware & other environments to be ready; scales up immediately


We went from 1 or 2 CRM enhancement releases per year to a minimum of 8 peryear by moving from on premise CRM to cloud CRM. Automation of process stepshave saved us millions of dollars by removing manual steps/activities. We havereduced our average speed to respond to customers by >4000% throughautomated routing/workflow. Most importantly, our users actually love the system(how many times have you heard that?).


Hard to negotiate ability to scale down; integrations with back-office systems is stillcomplex unless you have robust SOA platform already in place at yourorganization; doesn't fit for heavy graphics or multimedia apps; could benefit fromother than per-user pricing; reporting tools are not great and you usually have touse a 3rd party reporting tool for any complex report or reports which also need tosource data from outside your CRM (which many of ours do), and to get anyhistorical data analysis (e.g. need data warehouse).

Use of Solution:

Since 2009

Deployment Issues:

We did with reporting. We did not sufficiently test our reporting tools, built with acombination of salesforce and cognos reporting, and there were too manydiscrepancies in the numbers being reported such that we had to immediately put atiger team together to address. This had nothing to do with the platform, and moreto do with our process for adequately testing large scale reporting before rolling outto 4,000 people.

Stability Issues:

Nope, it's been more stable than any on premise software we've ever had.


Technical Support:

Very good. As usual, if you run into anything serious, escalate quickly. They havechannels for escalating, so use them. Don't let your technical teams try to solvethemselves for too long.

Previous Solutions:

We previously used Oracle CRM on premise. We switched because we spent toomuch time applying patches and upgrades and regression testing such that wewere unable to respond to changing business conditions and put in enhancements.Now we never deal with patches and upgrades and we only focus onenhancements.

Initial Setup:

Much of it was straightforward, with the only complex areas being areas that wewanted to customize for items like inquiry routing (our rules were very complex) andanalyzing how we wanted to configure the data best to allow us to also report theyway we wanted to for operations, executive and historical comparison reporting.Thinking those concepts through was difficult and I'd suggest spending more timeon those activities than anything else during design, and test your design conceptsearly so you can adjust if it turns out your assumptions don't work out the way youthought they would when you see real data being put through the system.


We used Appirio as our implementation vendor. They did a solid job. As usual, withconsulting, it's the strength of the team they field for you, so that is what you shouldevaluate the most.

ROI:

We have a case study on our implementation on salesforce.com website that youcan read, under DeVry.


Yes, we also looked at RightNow Technologies, which was later bought by Oracle.


JelasticVendor: Jelastic

Overview: Jelastic is the first company that combined unlimited PaaS ease of use (developer’s productivity) and thecontainer-based IaaS flexibility (agility) within a single platform. Jelastic supports popular programminglanguages such as Java, PHP, Ruby, Node.js, Python and .NET and provides the maximum applicationdensity, the fastest deployment model and the easiest management for private, public and hybrid clouds,all while retaining the flexibility to customize infrastructure and application configurations. A wide choice ofsoftware stacks by default, Docker and Cartridges templates, plugins such as Ant Task, Eclipse, IDEA,Maven and NetBeans IDE and other technologies integrated inside make Jelastic a turnkey cloud with acomplex solution. For more information or to start a free, two-week trial, visit us at www.jelastic.com

SampleCustomers:

Hosting Providers: Locaweb, Planeetta, dogado, Elastx Layershift, ServInt, Hostnet, Info.nl, Innofield,Lunacloud, Reg.ru, Websolute

Private Cloud and Integrators: Datajoe, Croc, Ciklum, Vergence, Centerprise, GMV Soluciones

PricingInformation:

The price for Jelastic VPC is charged per server and already includes 24/7 technical support. A privatecustomer can choose between two schemes:

- highly available cluster (5 servers and more)

- standard configuration cluster (3 servers)

Hosting providers can implement Jelastic Public Cloud via a no-risk revenue-sharing model.

New partners will be charged one-time fee for the initial deployment which also includes training,knowledge sharing and free beta support for up to 1 month. Important differentiation between Jelasticpartnership model and other providers is the fact that Jelastic provides 7/24/365 technical support to allpartners for the duration of the agreement without any additional fee.

For developers the pricing for using Jelastic resources depends on hosting providers. Jelastic provides aflexible pricing system where you pay only for the resources used with no need to reserve more than yourapp requires.

TopComparisons:*

Heroku vs. JelasticAzure vs. JelasticAmazon AWS vs. Jelastic




http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/heroku_vs_jelastic

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/azure_vs_jelastic

http://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/amazon-aws_vs_jelastic


"Costs less than othersolutions and it's easy tomigrate."

"We like the support forvertical and horizontalauto-scaling."

JELASTIC REVIEW BY A REAL USERIsmet Ozalp Verified by IT Central StationCo-founder at a tech services company with 1-500employees

Valuable Features:

Automatic vertical and horizontal scaling.

Easy setup process, I created my production and test environments in minutes.

Easy deployment throughout maven (automatically deploys your applications to allweb servers if you have high availability).

Pay only for the resources your application uses.


We almost don't have to maintain our servers. We don't have to worry about scalingas our user-base grows. Saves time and money.


An S3 like storage system, if they have a s3 API compatible system I can move myfiles from AWS.

Use of Solution:

2 years

Technical Support:

I am satisfied with technical support but Jelastic is a platform there are severalservice providers, so I can not comment on all of them.

Previous Solutions:

I used AWS. The problem with AWS was, I need to make a commitment for 3 yearsin order to reduce the price of a ec2 instance. But a lot changes in 3 years, at theend of the second year you may want to change your instance type, like I did wantto move from medium utilized server to a high utilized one but I already hadcontract on medium. With Jelastic I did not make any commitments and it's stillcosts less.


Initial Setup:

It took almost 5 minutes. A few clicks from the Jelastic control panel and you areready to go.


Heroku


JELASTIC REVIEW BY A REAL USERBojan Jovanovic Verified by IT Central StationFounder & Cloud Architect at innofield AG

Valuable Features:

- No Vendor-Lock-In

- Usage-based Billing

- Easy-to-use Management Dashboard

Use of Solution:

2 Years

Technical Support:

Based on our experience, the technical support from Jelastic is 10 of 10!

Other Advice:

Jelastic is exactly what we expect from a PaaS vendor: easy-to-start, easy-to-manage, container based technology, support for vertical and horizontal auto-scaling, and all this without vendor lock-in.


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