Comparison of AWS and BlueMix PaaS Cloud Service Providers

This paper compares AWS and BlueMix PaaS cloud service providers and offers insights into their offered services, design and navigation, and 'Hello World' app deployment. The paper concludes that no cloud service provider is perfect for all users and that different cloud services can prove to be suitable depending on the user's needs.

Running head: PAAS CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDER
PAAS CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDER
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Abstract:
Cloud services has emerged as one of the global preference for the management and
advancement in the technological field. However, there is complexity involved in the
selection of the service. Hence, the paper, has compared two of the cloud service provider
and determined some crucial facts that can assist a reader in the selection of the service. The
paper has been concluded by stating the no cloud service provider is perfect for all the users
and depending on the needs different cloud services can prove to be suitable for a user.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Cloud Service Providers.............................................................................................................3
Shortlisted..............................................................................................................................4
Comparison of AWS & BlueMix...............................................................................................4
Offered services.....................................................................................................................4
Design & Navigation..............................................................................................................5
‘Hello World’ app deployment..............................................................................................6
BLUEMIX............................................................................................................................12
Level of Complexity............................................................................................................18
Ease of Management............................................................................................................18
Costing model:.....................................................................................................................18
Author’s Opinion.....................................................................................................................19
Conclusion................................................................................................................................20
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................21

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Introduction
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.
Cloud Service Providers
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

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 Adobe Oracle Cloud SAP Heroku
Shortlisted
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.
Comparison of AWS & BlueMix
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.

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Offered services
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)
Design & Navigation
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

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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.
‘Hello World’ app deployment
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).
AWS:
Step 1: ‘Launch a Windows Server Amazon EC2 Instance’
User creates a tag key ‘Name’ and value of ‘CodeDeployDemo’.
Step 2: ‘Configure the Source Content to deploy’
The following secondary steps are involved in this step
‘Creating the web page’
1. Location allocation in system.
mkdir c:\temp\HelloWorldApp
cd c:\temp\HelloWorldApp
2. Create a index file in the allocated folder by name of ‘index.html’.
notepad index.html

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3. Add the HTML code to the file.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello, World!</title>
<style>
body {
color: #ffffff;
background-color: #0188cc;
font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
font-size:14px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div align="center"><h1>Hello, World!</h1></div>
<div align="center"><h2>You have successfully deployed an application using AWS
CodeDeploy</h2></div>
<div align="center">

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<p>What to do next? Take a look through the <a
href="https://aws.amazon.com/codedeploy">AWS CodeDeploy Documentation</a>.</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
‘Creation of script to run the app’
1. Add another file named, “before-install.bat” in the same folder.
notepad before-install.bat
2. Batch Script Code is added
REM Install Internet Information Server (IIS).
c:\Windows\Sysnative\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -Command Import-Module
-Name ServerManager
c:\Windows\Sysnative\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -Command Install-
WindowsFeature Web-Server
‘Add an application specification file’:
1. Add application specification file “appspec.yml’.
notepad appspec.yml
2. Adding the YAML code to the saved file.
version: 0.0
os: windows

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files:
- source: \index.html
destination: c:\inetpub\wwwroot
hooks:
BeforeInstall:
- location: \before-install.bat
timeout: 900
Step 3: ‘Uploading the "Hello, World!" Application’
‘Provision the Amazon S3 Bucket’:
Call ‘mb’ command by name of “codedeploydemobucket” to create Amazon S3
Bucket.
aws s3 mb s3://codedeploydemobucket
Following the below mentioned step to create an ‘Amazon S3 bucket (Console)’
 Follow the link ‘https://console.aws.amazon.com/s3/’
 Click on ‘Create Bucket’ and name the bucket.
 Selection of the region and click on ‘Create’ for completion of the process.
‘Permission to the Amazon-S3 Bucket and the IAM user’
{
"Statement": [
{
"Action": [
"s3:PutObject"
],
"Effect": "Allow",
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::codedeploydemobucket/*",

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"Principal": {
"AWS": [
"111122223333"
]
}
}
]
}
‘Verification and allowance to download request’
{
"Statement": [
{
"Action": [
"s3:Get*",
"s3:List*"
],
"Effect": "Allow",
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::codedeploydemobucket/*",
"Principal": {
"AWS": [
"arn:aws:iam::80398EXAMPLE:role/CodeDeployDemo"
]
}
}

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]
}
‘Verification of uploads’
{
"Version":"2012-10-17",
"Statement":[
{
"Effect":"Allow",
"Action":["s3:PutObject"],
"Resource":"arn:aws:s3:::codedeploydemobucket/*"
}
]
}
‘Prepare application file for Bucket’:
c:\
|-- temp\
|--HelloWorldApp\
|-- appspec.yml
|-- before-install.bat
|-- index.html
‘Pushing the bundled application file into a single archive’:
1. Moving back to the allotted folder “Hello World” application:
cd c:\temp\HelloWorldApp

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2. ‘Call the create application to register a new application ‘HelloWorld_App’ with the
AWS CodeDeploy’:
aws deploy create-application --application-name HelloWorld_App
3. ‘Call the push button to bundle the file together’:
aws deploy push --application-name HelloWorld_App --s3-location
s3://codedeploydemobucket/HelloWorld_App.zip --ignore-hidden-files
Step 4: ‘Deployment of the "Hello, World!" Application’
Deploying the application revision:
The code for deploying the application
aws deploy create-deployment-group --application-name HelloWorld_App --deployment-
group-name HelloWorld_DepGroup --deployment-config-name
CodeDeployDefault.OneAtATime --ec2-tag-filters
Key=Name,Value=CodeDeployDemo,Type=KEY_AND_VALUE --service-role-arn
serviceRoleARN
Calling the create-deployment group
aws deploy create-deployment --application-name HelloWorld_App --deployment-config-
name CodeDeployDefault.OneAtATime --deployment-group-name HelloWorld_DepGroup
--s3-location bucket=codedeploydemobucket,bundleType=zip,key=HelloWorld_App.zip
The deployment of the app is complete after, which troubleshooting and other measures are
taken.

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BLUEMIX
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
Figure 1
 Naming the toolchain
 Select ‘New’ followed by ‘Repository Type’ to integrate Git Repos and issue
tracking tool.

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 This page will appear after clicking on ‘Create’

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Developing a simple webpage:
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.
<html>
<body>
Hello, IBM cloud world!

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</body>
</html>
The picture below shows the box that will appear after entering the code.
Developing a manifest:
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’.
3. Paste the code provided below in the highlighted section.
--------------
application:
- buildstaacks: https://github.com/cloud/cloudfoundry/stati
Host: simple- website -${random}
Name: simple – website - ${random}
Memory: 64 M

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Stack: cflinuxfs2
#Note: Host will be the ‘URL’ of the application
‘Deploying the application’:
Click ‘Deploy’ in the ‘Web IDE’ section
On deployment the following screen will be displayed
Then the application can be launched in web browser by clicking “Open the application”.
The website will highlight:

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Level of Complexity
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.
Ease of Management
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.

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Costing model:
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)
Author’s Opinion
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

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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.

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