General Information

 The purpose of this assignment is to compare and contrast two cloud service providers and their services. By doing this assignment, you will acquire a good understanding of available cloud service providers and their service offerings. This will help you to determine appropriate services for developing smart applications.

 What do you need to do?

 The assignment requires you to do the following:

•  Identify four cloud service providers who offer PaaS (Platform as a Service) to develop applications.
• Select one of the cloud service providers from your list for further investigation. If necessary, create a trial account and use all the different services it offers. Take screenshots to record some of those services while using them.
• Compare and contrast between Bluemix (used in this unit) and the PaaS service of the cloud service provider you have chosen.

 What do you need to submit?

 You are required to submit a written report in a single Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) document. The report should contain 1500-2000 words excluding references with ±100 words slack. The report must contain the following sections (feel free to add one or more sections if necessary):

• Cover page/title page, Table of contents and abstract
• Introduction
• Cloud service providers

o   List all identified cloud service providers who offer PaaS (Platform as a Service) to develop applications

o   Select a service provider out of the list to compare with Bluemix and write two reasons to justify your choice

• Comparison and contrast with Bluemix – this is the body of the report and should be written as detailed as possible. You can include screenshots and other media to enrich your report (you are not allowed to use screenshots and media content from the internet – they must be your own. It is a good idea to try the environment before your answer this section. This section must and only include comparison and contrast between IBM Bluemix and your chosen service provider for the following:

o   Services offered for smart applications development such as Internet of Things (IoT) applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications and so on.

o   The quality of design and navigation of the PaaS system.

o   Step by step process required to create and deploy a “Hello World” application.

o   The level of difficulties for development and deployment process of the cloud environment.

o   Costing model offered by the providers. An example costing model can be found in the link below which you can use for the assignment.

 o   How easy to manage the application in the context of the following:

•  Allocate and upgrade resources like memory, space, etc.
• Update/amend host URL, hosting data center and program/code of the application.

• Your opinion  - Based on your comparison and contrast of two cloud providers,

o   Which service provider performed better and why?

o   Propose one area of improvement for each, you would like to see over their current services and why?

• Conclusion
• References