OpenShift vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 6, 2024

We compared OpenShift and Pivotal Cloud Foundry based on our user's reviews in several parameters.

OpenShift and Pivotal Cloud Foundry both offer scalable, secure, and user-friendly platforms with efficient automation capabilities. While OpenShift excels in customer service and integration options, Pivotal Cloud Foundry is praised for its flexibility and extensive documentation. However, OpenShift users have raised concerns about the complex interface and setup process, while Pivotal Cloud Foundry users have highlighted scalability and support as areas for improvement. Both platforms have proven to be profitable investments with fair pricing structures.

Features: OpenShift stands out with its robust scalability, efficient containerization, strong security measures, extensive automation capabilities, and seamless integration. Pivotal Cloud Foundry excels in its scalability, flexibility, strong automation, simplified development process, and extensive documentation and resources.

Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for OpenShift is reported to be smooth and hassle-free, with no negative comments from users. In comparison, Pivotal Cloud Foundry also has reasonable setup costs, according to user feedback. Both products have straightforward and easily manageable licensing processes., OpenShift users have reported it as a profitable investment, while Pivotal Cloud Foundry has yielded a positive ROI with valuable features, scalability, streamlined processes, and increased productivity.

Room for Improvement: OpenShift could benefit from improvements in its user interface, initial setup process, error handling, customization options, and integrations. Pivotal Cloud Foundry would benefit from enhancements in scalability, documentation, support resources, features, flexibility, and performance optimization.

Deployment and customer support: Based on the user feedback, it appears that the implementation process for OpenShift can vary, with some users reporting spending separate timeframes on deployment and setup. In contrast, feedback for Pivotal Cloud Foundry suggests that these terms may refer to the same period, and the duration can range from weeks to months depending on specific circumstances., OpenShift's customer service received praise for its promptness, effectiveness, and expertise. Customers deemed the experience exceptional. Pivotal Cloud Foundry's service was also praised for being responsive, helpful, and reliable with knowledgeable and friendly representatives. Overall, customers seem satisfied with both services.

The summary above is based on 41 interviews we conducted recently with OpenShift and Pivotal Cloud Foundry users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.

To learn more, read our detailed OpenShift vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable feature is the high availability for the applications.""OpenShift offers more stability than Kubernetes.""Overall, the solution's security throughout the stack and software supply chain is excellent.""I have seen a return on investment, and it depends upon the types and the nature of some of the most critical applications that have been hosted on the OpenShift infrastructure.""This solution helps us to account for peak seasons involving higher demand than usual. It also gives us confidence in the security of our overall systems.""The security features of OpenShift are strong when in use of role-based access.""In terms of implementation, OpenShift is very user-friendly, which is an advantage. We are using it along with GitLab for implementing CI/CD pipelines. That's a feature that other products also have, but in OpenShift, we find it good.""The most valuable feature of OpenShift is the security context constraint (SCC). The solution’s security throughout the stack is good. And security context constraints provide port-level security. It's a granular level of control, where you can give privileges to certain users to work on certain applications."

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"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the deployment is easier.""The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided.""Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java.""The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good.""It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment.""We find its stability and scalability valuable.""Stability is not a concern with this product.""It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry Pros →

Cons
"Room for improvement is around the offerings that come as a bundle with the container platform. The packaging of the platform should be done such that customers do not have to purchase additional licenses.""The monitoring part could be better to monitor the performance.""This solution could be improved by offering best practices on standardization and additional guidance on how to use this solution.""We need some kind of a multi-cluster management solution from the Red Hat site.""There are challenges related to additional security layers, connectivity compliance for endpoints, and integration.""An enhancement to consider for the future might involve incorporating a comprehensive solution for CI/CD tailored specifically for OpenShift.""Needs work on volume handling (although this is already better with GlusterFS). Security (SSSD) would also be an improvement.""We want to see better alerting, especially in critical situations requiring immediate intervention. Until we go to the dashboard, it can be challenging to quickly recognize that there's an issue for us to deal with. Therefore, a popup of the event or a tweaked GUI to catch our attention when it's alerting would be a welcome change. Everything else is good. We don't need any additional features. From the operations perspective, as an administrator, there is nothing concerning."

More OpenShift Cons →

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications.""Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples.""I'd like to see a larger service offering.""In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools.""In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience.""The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it.""Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex.""Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "I don't deal with the cost part, but I know that the cost is very high when compared to other products. They charge for CPU and memory, but we don't worry about it."
  • "We had a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) license for all our servers' operating systems. By having multiple Red Hat products together, you can negotiate costs and leverage on having a sort of enterprise license agreement to reduce the overall outlay or TCO."
  • "Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."
  • "Depending on the extent of the product use, licenses are available for a range of time periods, and are renewable at the end of the period."
  • "We are currently using the open version, OKD. We plan to get the enterprise version in the future."
  • "The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."
  • "This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."
  • "The model of pricing and buying licences is quite rigid. We are in the process of negotiating on demand pricing which will help us take advantage of the cloud as a whole."
  • More OpenShift Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
  • "You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
  • "The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
  • "The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
  • "The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
  • "We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."
  • More Pivotal Cloud Foundry Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or is… more »
    Top Answer:Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database… more »
    Top Answer:OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.
    Top Answer:I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.
    Top Answer:I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.
    Top Answer:Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice. A few things, such as what OpenShift does… more »
    Ranking
    3rd
    out of 33 in PaaS Clouds
    Views
    16,712
    Comparisons
    13,257
    Reviews
    29
    Average Words per Review
    679
    Rating
    8.6
    7th
    out of 33 in PaaS Clouds
    Views
    11,430
    Comparisons
    10,337
    Reviews
    11
    Average Words per Review
    532
    Rating
    7.5
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
    Learn More
    Overview

    OpenShift is Red Hat's Kubernetes platform that provides a cloud environment for development, hosting, and scaling applications. The solution enables a cloud-like experience regardless of the location where it has been deployed, including in the cloud, on premises, or at the edge. It allows developers to select where to build, deploy, and run applications through a consistent experience, supported by full-stack automated operations, and self-service provisioning.

    OpenShift employs an open hybrid cloud strategy which is built on the foundation of technologies including Linux, containers, and automation. This approach provides clients with a flexible selection of where to run their applications. Applications can be built on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and are automatically compatible with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. OpenShift enables automation inside and outside clients' Kubernetes clusters.

    The solution works with traditional, modernized, and cloud-native applications. It supports a wide variety of workloads, including Java, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), and databases. Due to the vast ecosystem of technology partners that OpenShift supports, clients can benefit from automated deployment and life-cycle management. This product improves the security of the full application life cycle by decreasing operational risk. This is achieved by shifting security left and automating development, security, and operations (DevSecOps).

    OpenShift Features

    OpenShift facilitates clients’ application-running processes through various features. Some of the product’s features include:

    • Backup and recovery: This feature ensures logical and physical protection through containers, Kubernetes, and serverless present opportunities. It is used to meet recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO).

    • CI/CD pipelines: This feature of OpenShift automates the continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, accelerating the time for application development.

    • GitOps: The GitOps feature increases security and reliability for applications through tools like Git repositories, Kubernetes, and CI/CD. The product includes this feature to allow developers more freedom in app development through tracing and accounting for the application life cycle in the Git repository.

    • Helm: Helm is a package and installs manager that simplifies the deployment of containerized apps. It is included in the features of OpenShift to assist users with interoperability and support cloud-native applications from independent software vendors (ISVs).

    • Sandboxed containers: OpenShift offers sandboxed containers based on Kata Containers to provide an additional layer of isolation for applications while meeting high-security requirements.

    • Windows containers: The product offers this feature to facilitate users when running their Windows applications by providing them a scheduled, orchestrated, and managed environment.

    • Security: OpenShift offers various operations through which clients can ensure the safety of their data and applications. They include container host and platform multitenancy, security and trusted content sources, security of the container registry, the build pipeline, and data, managing security container deployments, and more.

    • Service Mesh: This feature provides a uniform way for clients to connect, manage, and observe microservices-based applications. It also provides detailed behavioral insight.

    • Operators: This feature automates the development, configuration, and management of Kubernetes-native applications.

    • Virtualization: OpenShift allows users to run and manage virtual machine (VM) and container workloads side by side.

    OpenShift Benefits

    OpenShift provides the companies and users utilizing it with various benefits. These benefits include the following:

    • OpenShift provides scalability for applications, allowing them to run across hundreds of nodes in seconds.

    • The product offers flexibility by simplifying the deployment and management of hybrid infrastructure and providing self-managed or fully-managed service.

    • OpenShift incorporates open-source technologies alongside its native components and features.

    • The product enhances the developer experience by offering a variety of tools, multi language support, and integrated development environment (IDE) integrations.

    • The solution supports automated installation and over-the-air platform upgrades in the cloud with Amazon AWS, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, as well as various on-premise platforms.

    • OpenShift includes streamlined and automated container and app builds, as well as health management and scaling.

    • The solution enhances the support of smaller-footprint topologies in edge scenarios.

    • OpenShift provides easy multiple cluster management through Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes.

    • The product has enhanced security capabilities that include access controls, an enterprise registry with a built-in scanner, and networking.

    • The solution supports a wide spectrum of enterprise storage solutions for running stateful as well as stateless apps.

    Reviews from Real Users

    An executive head of department - M-PESA Tech at a comms service provider gives OpenShift a high rating because its automation can go a long way in reducing time to market and the time required to fix issues that arise from deployment.

    Vikram C., head of infrastructure & cloud ops at a comms service provider, rates highly three qualities of OpenShift, summarizing them to mature, seamless integration, and easy setup.

    Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) is the leading enterprise PaaS, powered by Cloud Foundry. PCF provides a cloud-native application platform that allows you to continuously deliver any app to every major private and public cloud with a single platform. PCF is proven to accelerate feature delivery with higher developer productivity and a 200:1 developer to operator ratio. PCF's built-in security and self-healing capabilities reduce risk in your app portfolio while maintaining high-availability at scale to keep customer facing systems online even in the most challenging circumstances. pivotal.io

    Sample Customers
    UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
    Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm32%
    Comms Service Provider18%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Computer Software Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm33%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Insurance Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm56%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Retailer11%
    Government11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm37%
    Manufacturing Company22%
    Computer Software Company5%
    Insurance Company5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise65%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise79%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Large Enterprise67%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business10%
    Midsize Enterprise4%
    Large Enterprise86%
    Buyer's Guide
    OpenShift vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about OpenShift vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    OpenShift is ranked 3rd in PaaS Clouds with 30 reviews while Pivotal Cloud Foundry is ranked 7th in PaaS Clouds with 11 reviews. OpenShift is rated 8.4, while Pivotal Cloud Foundry is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of OpenShift writes "Provides us with the flexibility and efficiency of cloud-native stacks while enabling us to meet regulatory constraints". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Pivotal Cloud Foundry writes "Reliable and supports CI/CD but migrations are difficult". OpenShift is most compared with Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Oracle Cloud Platform, whereas Pivotal Cloud Foundry is most compared with Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, VMware Tanzu Application Service and Cloud Foundry. See our OpenShift vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry report.

    See our list of best PaaS Clouds vendors.

    We monitor all PaaS Clouds reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.