Cloud Wars: from sign-up to VM (5/6) | Chapter 3, Part 5: IBM Cloud

Introduction

Welcome to the continuation of the third installment of Paul’s Tutorial Series! As mentioned in my previous article, this tutorial is all about exploring cloud providers.

More specifically, I wanted to look at first user experience across them, so I decided to sign-up to (6) cloud providers, and capture my experience spinning up a free-tier VM right after sign up.

The (6) cloud providers I tested are, in alphabetical order:

This means that this third chapter of my tutorial series will have 6 parts, one for each cloud provider.

While I walk you through every part of this chapter, I will measure the following:

Configuration of the default VM offered in free tier
Approximate number of clicks needed from post-signup page to having a VM up and running
Number of screens needed in a replay to publish this tutorial
Spin-up time
Usability score (from my perspective, in a scale of 1 to 5)

Today’s Tutorial: IBM Cloud

Let’s dive into IBM Cloud, by clicking on the image below:

IBM has been a fair experience in terms of usability, but the VM spin up time was terribly long.

Other observations:
1. IBM does not have a free tier, but rather free credit.
2. IBM makes you create a billing account in the middle of the provisioning flow not at sign-up.

Overall though, the VM spin up killed it:

Config of default “free” tier VM	1 vCPU / 1 GB RAM
Approximate number of clicks from signup to VM	7-10
Number of draft replay screens	11
Spin-up time	< 10s
Paul’s usability score (1-5)	4.5