BlueMix Doesn’t Support All the Programming Languages Your Developers May Need.

BlueMix supports software development in Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, SQL, or NoSQL. BlueMix currently does not support development in C, C#, C++. That eliminates most developers who write code for Microsoft platforms—about 50 percent of the developer community. It also doesn’t support Objective C, which is the language of choice for Apple iOS.

BlueMix Targets Enterprise Developers; Not Native Cloud or Mobile Developers. In her blog post,First Impressions of IBM’s BlueMix, Gartner’s Lydia Leong pointed out:

“It’s very clear that IBM is targeting the enterprise developer, especially the enterprise developer who is currently developing in Java on WebSphere technologies. It’s bringing those developers to the cloud — not targeting cloud-native developers, who are more likely to be drawn to something likeAppFogif they’re looking for a Cloud Foundry service. Given that IBM says that it will provide strong support for integrating with existing on-premise applications, this is a strategy that makes sense.”

~ Lydia Leong, Gartner Group

BlueMix Doesn’t Deploy Apps on Mobile Devices. BlueMix supports the development of mobile apps, but it doesn’t deploy to mobile apps, nor does it provide a “write once/run anywhere” capabil- ity for mobile app development and deployment, which is the holy grail for most enterprises devel- oping and continuously updating mobile apps to support millions of consumers using lots of different mobile devices.

Worklight is a more complete integrated development and deployment environment for mobile applications, but it has yet to be ported to the BlueMix PaaS.

IBM has partnered with Twillio to provide easy integration of two kinds of phone services for BlueMix-developed apps: call me and text me. But despite its billing as a mobile-phone friendly development platform, BlueMix is not (yet) optimized for helping enterprise developers develop and deploy mobile apps that will run on their end-customers’ mobile phones.

Despite its billing as a mobile-phone friendly development platform, BlueMix is not (yet) optimized for helping enterprise developers develop and deploy mobile apps that will run on their end-customers’ mobile phones.

BlueMix Doesn’t Support Real-Time Application Monitoring. According toMike West of Saugatuck Investments, BlueMix’s “application monitoring capability is via read-only dashboards that are not interactive.”

Yet, IBM has other applications that do, which include TeaLeaf, which can be used to monitor mobile apps in real time.

What Questions Should You Be Asking IBM?

If you’re interested in considering using IBM’s Cloud Platform and Infrastructure to develop, deploy and maintain Customer Clouds, we have several questions that we recommend you ask. Here they are:

• How can we gain and maintain control over the end-to-end security of our cloud instances?

• How can we ensure that NONE of our customer cloud applications or data are running in multi-tenant Cloud environments? 

• Can we, in fact, control the jurisdiction(s) in which our customers’ data resides? Can we prohibit personally identifiable information from crossing borders

• Why should we use BlueMix instead of Cloud Foundry if we aren’t using IBM’s Rational development environment or IBM’s WebSphere services?

• When will the IBM Worklight mobile development IDE be available via BlueMix?

• What if I want to use my own mobile application development tools but still take advantage of BlueMix to call back-end services for my IBM applications?

• Do you espouse the concept of “Customer Clouds” and will you help me develop and deploy them? 

                                                                                                     Patricia B. Seybold