How to Choose your platform

IaaS, CaaS, PaaS Decision Support Matrix

Offering	PCF	Kubernetes	vCloud (VMs')	Traditional
Type of Service	Application PaaS	Container PaaS (CaaS)	IaaS Self-Service	IaaS Traditional Provisioning
What	Cloud Foundry is an open source cloud platform as a service on which developers can build, deploy, run and scale applications on public and private cloud models. High-level abstraction of cloud-native application development. Give PCF an app, platform does rest (from tracking dependencies, application building, network, routing etc.)	Kubernetes is a container orchestrator. With container orchestration tools, the user creates and maintains the container themselves. For many teams, having this flexibility and control over the application is preferred (non-opinionated/non-restrictive).	vCloud Automation enables IT Automation through the creation and management of personalized infrastructure, application and custom IT services (XaaS).
Addon’s/Benefits	Automated routing Auto scaling CF CLI Load balancer DNS Logging & metrics aggregator	Auto-scaling Kubectl (CLI) / Dashboard DNS Load balancer Logging & Metrics aggregator Stateful application Support Persistent Storage HTTPS / TCP connectivity Flexible architecture (with support for 3rd party plugins) Self Service Org/Team management	The goal is to accelerate application deployment and delivery, dramatically reducing IT costs through policy-enabled workflow automation. Enable Cloud-like functionality for applications that are not designed as cloud-native apps Full Self-Service Portal and APIs for provisioning and resource management Self-Service scaling and option for application team controlled auto-scaling On-Demand VMs	Physical Servers Virtual Appliances Specialized Virtual Machines
Optional Services	Bring your own containers: Supported, restrictive & opinionated	Bring your own containers: Supported, flexibility for customizations and non-opinionated	Application specific catalog items Complete Environment Provisioning and Blueprinting APIs for Delivering Infrastructure as Code	Highly customized servers
Recommended use cases	PCF offers higher level of abstraction is ideal for new applications, cloud-native apps and apps that run fine out of a build pack. For teams working with short lifecycles and frequent releases, PCF offers an excellent product.	Kubernetes is lower-level abstraction of PaaS, meaning provides greater flexibility for customizations, build your own containers but will mean more work for Engineering teams. Legacy applications can still take advantage of many features available in Kubernetes.	Non cloud-native applications	Large SQLServer and Oracle Database Servers Large Cassandra, Gemfire and Mongo Databases
Downside/Pitfalls	Restrictive and opinionated (when it comes to customization)	Non-restrictive, flexibility for customization. Some operational learning required.		Most expensive Longest Lead Times
OS Patching	If OS needs to be upgraded, current instance is destroyed and a new instance is created with updated code	If OS needs to be upgraded, current instance is destroyed and a new instance is created with updated code	Application team responsible for OS Patching	OS Support team assists in patching
Application Upgrades	Application owner responsible	Application owner responsible	Application owner responsible	Application owner responsible