Comparison Of AWS And IBM BlueMix As PaaS Providers - Essay.

The assignment requires you to do the following:
• Identify four cloud service providers who offer PaaS (Platform as a Service) to develop applications.
• Select one of the cloud service providers from your list for further investigation. If necessary, create a trial account and use all the different services it offers. Take screenshots to record some of those services while using them.
• Compare and contrast between Bluemix (used in this unit) and the PaaS service of the cloud service provider you have chosen.

Brief overview of PaaS and its benefits

Cloud services have provided great opportunities to the developers globally. After the introduction of Cloud PaaS (Platform-as-a-service) the developers do not have to make huge investments or face complex issues in getting appropriate platform or tools for developing applications (Lang, Wiesche and Krcmar 2016). However, heavy surge in the cloud service providers have confused the end-users on the selection of the service provider. The options of cloud service providers are vast from Amazon to Google and multiple others, all of them are providing some unique offering to the clients (Abdelmaboud et al. 2015). Hence, the developed report is an attempt to minimise the confusions that the developers are facing. The discussed objective of the paper will be achieved by shortlisting most prominent PaaS providers and selecting one of them to compare with IBM BlueMix (Lins et al. 2015). The deployment and development process of the ‘Hello World’ of the AWS and the BlueMix has also been provided. Finally, the author’s perception over the best PaaS cloud service after the comparison will be provided before concluding the paper.

PaaS is the platform that enables the user to develop, maintain and test different applications, O.S (operating System), networks, servers and others (Whaiduzzaman and Gani 2014). The following list offers the most prominent cloud service providers that offers PaaS service:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Google App Engine
• Microsoft Azure
• IBM BlueMix
• Red Hat OpenShift
• Adobe
• Oracle Cloud
• SAP
• Heroku

AWS, Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure are the market leaders of the cloud services and most prominent of them is the AWS. Hence, AWS is selected as the co-subject of the paper.

JUSTIFICATION 1: The selection of AWS is based on the fact that, it is the current leader in the cloud service providers and captures over 62% of the cloud market (Novet 2018). It also offers almost similar offerings like the Blue mix but differ in the mode of operation.

JUSTIFICATION 2: The service offered by the AWS offers huge scalability option and have proven itself to be reliable.

Both of the subjects of the paper, are global leader in technology and cloud services. However, they differ from each other in some aspects of which the foremost id the implementation (Wang and He 2014). While, AWS is more suitable for the professional or corporate purposes, BlueMix is suitable for the scholarly works that includes experimentation within the labs, academic works and others (Jiang, Ma and Wei 2016). Additionally, BlueMix offers ease of use while, its counterpart offers flexibility (Fiaz, Guruprakash and Navaz 2017). Hence, it can be stated that both of them are offering similar services but with different approach. The following section will attempt at getting an in-depth knowledge about the subjects by comparing them.

AWS vs IBM BlueMix: A Comparative Analysis

It has been stated in the justification that both the subjects offer almost similar services to each other. However, there is some basic difference and the following table discusses the same:

Services offered	AWS	BlueMix
Internet of Things	AWS offers features like  MQTT communication, HTTP and others with the AWS IoT SDK.	On the contrary, IBM offers configured IoT platform.
Artificial Intelligence	The AI service offered by the AWS is comparatively weaker than its counterparts.	IBM offers a stable AI service to the users.
SDA (Scalable Digital Application)	It leads in the considered service because of its huge scalability.	Offers limited scalability option and hence, is lacking in this field.
Others	The services are designed for the business and similar applications.	They have their focus on the scholars and students mostly.

Table 1: SERVICE COMPARISON OF THE SUBJECTS

(Source: Created by the Author)

The first thing that a user notices while using a platform or a service is its design and navigation because it decides the comfort that the user will enjoy while using the service (Lins, Teigeler and Sunyaev 2016). AWS has kept the vitality of design and navigation in mind and developed a system that offers an amazing interface (Almorsy, Grundy and Müller 2016). On the contrary, issues and bugs have been evident in the BlueMix which are related to the interface issues, multiple logins and similar other (Zheng et al. 2016). Hence, it can be stated that AWS leads in the discussed field and BlueMix needs some improvements in design & navigation in order to cope up with the former.

The discussed section will offer an insight in to deployment and development of Hello World app by both the AWS and BlueMix. Codes from the official website of the service providers have been attached to increase reliability from (Docs.aws.amazon.com 2018) and (Lauren and Hadar 2015).

Step 1: ‘Create a tool chain for the new application’

• Logging in to the IBM Cloud
• Navigating to the ‘DevOps dashboard’
• Click on the option ‘create a tool chain’
• Selecting ‘develop a cloud foundary app’ tool chain

• Naming the toolchain

• Select ‘New’ followed by ‘Repository Type’ to integrate Git Repos and issue tracking tool.

• This page will appear after clicking on ‘Create’

   The discussed step takes in consideration of the coding part. The following steps are of assistance in achieving the objective.

1. On clicking “Eclipse Orion Web IDE” on the appeared toolchain overview page will automatically create ‘gifignore’ and ‘.cfignore’.
2. Followed by selection of “File>New>File”.
3. Enter the file name ‘index.html’ on the appeared page.
4. Enter the code.

The picture below shows the box that will appear after entering the code.

The deployment of the application is not possible without a manifest file and in this step that file is created.

1. Select “File>New>File” in the ‘Web IDE’ section.
2. Name the highlighted file ‘manifest.yml’.

 The development & deployment procedures of the ‘Hello World’ app in both the subjects have been done. It is evident from the process that the complexity level of the discussed process is high in the AWS than its counterpart (Whaiduzzaman et al. 2014). However, it is notable that the process is also more descriptive in the AWS which provides the opportunity of problem identification and also maintains a level of standardisation (Jiang, Ma and Wei 2016). The reason for keeping the process complex and descriptive may lay on the fact that AWS has designed the platform for the professionals and hence, to build a rich organisational infrastructure, modification is mandatory (Zhou et al. 2016). On the contrary, BlueMix is more focused on scholarly work and hence they have kept the platform simple to assist in more and efficient scholarly works.

Features and Services Offered

Allocation and upgradation are two most crucial factors that decides the ease of managing a cloud service. The authority that the user enjoys in managing the resources also affects their perception about the management of the system (Osseiran et al. 2014). In the discussed area AWS leads in allocation and upgradation opportunities because it offers huge resource size and in the process offering a huge scalability (Shaikh and Sasikumar 2015). Another notable fact is that AWS has kept the service limited to ensure safety and earn reliability in the process. While, though BlueMix does not offer huge scalability it offers its users an extended freedom to manage their services and to ensure safety it had adopted few measures that can prevent any potential misuse of the services (Filali and Yagoubi 2015). The discussed measures include calibration process which is an extremely complex process but ensures a level of safety.

There is a huge difference between the costing of both the service providers. The table below shows the difference.

Services	BlueMix	AWS
Optimisation hosting Cost (1-year)	$910,185	$1,852,733
Offerings	Business analytics cloud supported, managed relational DBMS for MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle BYOL, SQL server or PostgreSQL, 5GB standard storage and others (Lauren and Hadar 2015). It is also free for the 1st year.	VMware vSphere, NSX and vSAN in an integrated stack of virtual compute and can also work as be merged with user’s existing data centre (Docs.aws.amazon.com 2014). It offers free service for 2 month.

Table 2: Cost Comparison

(Source: Created by Author)

The discussion above can be concluded to state that as per the perception of the author, though BlueMix is catching up with the global leaders, it is still way behind AWS which will certainly change in the coming times. The reason for AWS leading the race is because, it offers huge scalability and flexibility along with a large size of the resources. On the other hand, BlueMix does offer cost-efficient services but the services and features are limited to choose. Additionally, AWS has targeted a bigger and richer audience of corporate world which enables it to collect more capital and invest in improving its services faster. Hence, the author would recommend that though, BlueMix may prove to be a better service in the future because it is open source software (that offers cost-efficiency and simple operational procedure) but for now AWS would be the most appropriate choice of selection.

Conclusion

The paper has discussed cloud service and done a comparative evaluation of two cloud service providers after which, it would be suitable to state that though cloud service offers significant benefits, one should always evaluate the available options before selecting a cloud service. It is advisable because it is evident from the evaluation that though most of the service providers offer similar services then also they differ according to the needs of the user. The user with scalability needs should opt for AWS while those who need freedom of management should opt for the BlueMix services. Similarly, other service providers offers different advantages to the users. Hence, the paper can be emphasises to state that selection of appropriate cloud service as per the requirement is one of the only ways to utilise the cloud services to its full potential.

Scalability and Ease of Management

Abdelmaboud, A., Jawawi, D.N., Ghani, I., Elsafi, A. and Kitchenham, B., 2015. Quality of service approaches in cloud computing: A systematic mapping study. Journal of Systems and Software, 101, pp.159-179.

Almorsy, M., Grundy, J. and Müller, I., 2016. An analysis of the cloud computing security problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107.

Lauren, H. S. and Hadar, H., 2015. Deploy a Hello World webpage to IBM Cloud. [online] Ibm.com. Available at: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/library/cl-deploy-a-hello-world-webpage-to-bluemix-app/index.html [Accessed 18 Apr. 2018].

Docs.aws.amazon.com. (2014). Tutorial: Deploy a "Hello, World!" Application with AWS CodeDeploy (Windows Server) - AWS CodeDeploy. [online] Available at: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codedeploy/latest/userguide/tutorials-windows.html [Accessed 18 Apr. 2018].

Fiaz, A.S.S., Guruprakash, K.S. and Navaz, A.S.S., 2017. Prediction of best cloud service provider using the QoS ranking framework. International Journal of Engineering and Technology (UAE), 7(1.1), pp.486-488.

Filali, F.Z. and Yagoubi, B., 2015. Global trust: A trust model for cloud service selection. International Journal of Computer Network and Information Security, 7(5), p.41.

Jiang, Q., Ma, J. and Wei, F., 2016. On the security of a privacy-aware authentication scheme for distributed mobile cloud computing services. IEEE Systems Journal.

Jiang, Q., Ma, J. and Wei, F., 2016. On the security of a privacy-aware authentication scheme for distributed mobile cloud computing services. IEEE Systems Journal.

Lang, M., Wiesche, M. and Krcmar, H., 2016. What are the most important criteria for cloud service provider selection? A Delphi study. In European Conference on Information Systems.

Lins, S., Teigeler, H. and Sunyaev, A., 2016, May. Towards a bright Future: Enhancing diffusion of continuous Cloud Service Auditing by Third Parties. In ECIS (p. ResearchPaper130).

Lins, S., Thiebes, S., Schneider, S. and Sunyaev, A., 2015, January. What is really going on at your cloud service provider? Creating trustworthy certifications by continuous auditing. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 5352-5361). IEEE.

Mei, J., Li, K., Ouyang, A. and Li, K., 2015. A profit maximization scheme with guaranteed quality of service in cloud computing. IEEE transactions on computers, 64(11), pp.3064-3078.

Novet, J. 2018. Amazon lost cloud market share to Microsoft in the fourth quarter: KeyBanc. [online] CNBC. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/12/amazon-lost-cloud-market-share-to-microsoft-in-the-fourth-quarter-keybanc.html [Accessed 17 Apr. 2018].

Osseiran, A., Boccardi, F., Braun, V., Kusume, K., Marsch, P., Maternia, M., Queseth, O., Schellmann, M., Schotten, H., Taoka, H. and Tullberg, H., 2014. Scenarios for 5G mobile and wireless communications: the vision of the METIS project. IEEE Communications Magazine, 52(5), pp.26-35.

Shaikh, R. and Sasikumar, M., 2015. Trust model for measuring security strength of cloud computing service. Procedia Computer Science, 45, pp.380-389.

Wang, F.K. and He, W., 2014. Service strategies of small cloud service providers: A case study of a small cloud service provider and its clients in Taiwan. International Journal of Information Management, 34(3), pp.406-415.

Whaiduzzaman, M. and Gani, A., 2014, February. Measuring security for cloud service provider: A Third Party approach. In Electrical Information and Communication Technology (EICT), 2013 International Conference on (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Whaiduzzaman, M., Gani, A., Anuar, N.B., Shiraz, M., Haque, M.N. and Haque, I.T., 2014. Cloud service selection using multicriteria decision analysis. The Scientific World Journal, 2014.

Zheng, L., Joe-Wong, C., Brinton, C.G., Tan, C.W., Ha, S. and Chiang, M., 2016. On the viability of a cloud virtual service provider. ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, 44(1), pp.235-248.

Zhou, A., Wang, S., Zheng, Z., Hsu, C.H., Lyu, M.R. and Yang, F., 2016. On cloud service reliability enhancement with optimal resource usage. IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, 4(4), pp.452-466.