Platform-as-a-Service Comparative: Openshift vs CloudFoundry

In previous posts, I wrote about the importance of moving ASAP to cloud and I suggested 3 essential things to help you understanding the cloud computing.

To complete this series, I have written the current post to describe the "middle-layer" of cloud computing: PaaS.

Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is a category of cloud computing services. From architectural view, it is situated between IaaS (lower layer) and Saas (higher layer). PaaS enables to cloud consumers the creation of software using tools and/or libraries, as well as, it guarantees the continuity of software building cycle with tools for testing and integration. In addition, PaaS providers provide the networks, servers, storage, and other services required to host applications.

The flexibility of PaaS packages helps to abstract the implementation and deployment of applications from the complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software and provisioning hosting capabilities.

My first "cloud" project consisted in moving a legacy application to cloud. The purpose was to implement a Software-as-a-Service based on an existing java servlet application. The first step was to select the suitable Platform-as-a-Service which guarantees a soft migration of the web application. The multiple PaaSs existing in the market made the choice very difficult. Therefore, I decided to draw up a comparative table following predefined criteria. Each PaaS got a rate for every criteria between 0 and 5. +Cloud Foundry and +OpenShift were the best platforms that matches to my requirements because they gathered the important average which was calculated based on coefficient that indicates the importance level. 

Following the resulting table:

Criteria	coefficient	Openshift		CloudFoundry
Port a legacy application (Java based)	3	Red Hat provides both fully supported JBoss EAP (App Server) and Tomcat cartridges for running legacy Java applications.	4	Tomcat	4,5
Configuration Complexity	1,5	Red Hat enables you to quickly deploy apps via the OpenShift Web Console, CLI or Eclipse IDE with minimal configuration required.	3		4
Security (PCI, SAE, etc.)	2	Red provides security CVE monitoring & patching for the OpenShift platform and all supported runtime cartridges (Java, Ruby, PHP, Python, Node.js, Perl, MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB, etc.). In addition OpenShift integrates SE Linux isolation for security at the paltform container level.	4		4
APIs and Documentation (for Java)	2	Complete API documentation included for both OpenShift and specific cartridge runtime documentation like JBoss EAP and EWS/Tomcat.	4	http://docs.cloudfoundry.org/	4
Mysql support	2	Red Hat provides a fully supported MySQL cartridge for both OpenShift Online and Enterprise.	5	Pivotal Integrates natively ClearDb in the market place. Additiannaly, any other mysql service can be used	5
Lock-in Level	1,5	There is no lock-in with OpenShift. Customers can always choose to use the free open source upstream OpenShift Origin distribution if the choose. And OpenShift makes use of standard, unmodified application runtimes like JBoss, Apache, Tomcat, etc. so your apps can be easily migrated off of OpenShift if needed.	4,5	No lock-in	4
Hybrid PaaS	1,5	Red Hat supports both OpenShift Enterprise for Private PaaS and OpenShift Online for Public PaaS.	3	CloudFoundry can be public, private, hybrid and micro	4
Performance and Scalability	1,5	The OpenShift platform is proven to perform at scale, with hundreds of thousands of applications live and running in OpenShift Online Public PaaS and numerous enterprise customers deploying OpenShift Enterprise Private PaaS.	4		4,5
Community	1	Red Hat has built a huge developer community around OpenShift Online with tens of thousands of registered users and over a million apps deployed. See our Developer Spotlight here: https://www.openshift.com/developer-spotlight. OpenShift Origin (http://openshift.github.io/) is the upstream open source contributor community for OpenShift. See http://bit.ly/1m2Mky6 for details.	4	over 10x on total open source contributors to a PaaS project with 1,213 individuals	5
Private Cloud	1	OpenShift Enterprise can be deployed in a customer's Private Cloud environment or on-premise data center.	4,5	CloudFoundry can be installed in any server	4,5
Eclipse IDE Integration	1	Full Eclipse IDE integration via JBoss Developer Studio plugin	4	Natively Integrated with Spring Tool Suite IDE	4
Major Firmware Support/Partner	1	Red Hat	4	The Cloud Foundry open-source project looks set to become a standard piece of technology in the thriving distributed systems ecosystem: its main backer, Pivotal, has persuaded IBM, HP, SAP and Rackspace to join a new foundation dedicated to the tech.	5
Pricing	1	https://www.openshift.com/products/pricing	4		4

Finally, I would like to thanks both cloud foundry and openshift communities, specially Mr. +Joe Fernandes  and Ms. +Diane Mueller .

Note: This comparative post was written following personal requirements. Certainly, non-mentioned criteria or questions would be better to use them to elaborate a more objective comparative (someone asked : your questions don't make it seem like this is about a PaaS; where is health management, logging services, ID management?). Same for the others PaaS. Indeed, in my case, the main issue was to move a legecy/existing java application to cloud.