The benefits of using IBM Cloud Pak for Applications for your modernization journey
March 08, 2024
The benefits of using IBM Cloud Pak for Applications for your modernization journey
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cloud Pak for Applications
Pros
- Provides a fantastic range of Application runtimes allowing the most suitable runtime to be selected for the app being implemented.
- After using Transformation Advisor for quite a while, it is an indispensable tool to help modernize, specifically from WebSphere and Tomcat, towards the lightweight, fast and efficient Liberty runtime.
- The simplicity of the licensing by wrapping many products into a single offering with a different VPC weighting.
- Allows us to modernize our runtime from WebSphere Application Server (or ND) to WebSphere Liberty core without sacrificing our WAS licenses.
Cons
- While the licensing is considerably simplified than it used to be, I still find it somewhat confusing. For example, WebSphere Liberty Core has an 8:1 VPC ratio. This is clear when dealing with VMs but it is still not clear to me as to whether we get an 8:1 ratio when running on OpenShift or whether we need to purchase additional OpenShift licenses to support running WebSphere Liberty Core in OpenShift.
- Not so much related to IBM Cloud Pak for Applications, but while Transformation Advisor is an indispensable tool to help modernize to the WebSphere Liberty runtime, I wish we could run it against WebSphere Liberty itself. The reason being, we are now using TA as a single repository for our configurations. TA also highlights many potential issues when migrating to Liberty; these issues may also be applicable for apps already running in Liberty, we just don't know it yet.
- We have been able to migrate apps away from the expensive WAS-ND to the more cost-effective WAS-base without throwing away our WAS-ND licenses. With a 1:4 ratio of WAS-ND to WAS-base we've been able to we've been able to save in excess of 75% on licensing charges for these apps.
- By having a license model based on VPC ratios (1:4:8 - WAS-ND:WAS-base:Liberty core) we've been able to move away from using license pooling resulting in over-allocating (i.e. wasting) CPU cores for each license pool, to using consolidated license pools hosting a combination of WAS-ND, WAS-base and Liberty-core. This has allowed us to reduce our licensing costs accordingly.
Do you think IBM Cloud Pak for Applications delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with IBM Cloud Pak for Applications's feature set?
Yes
Did IBM Cloud Pak for Applications live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of IBM Cloud Pak for Applications go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy IBM Cloud Pak for Applications again?
Yes
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