Comparing Container-Based Microservices and Workspace as a Service: Which One to Choose?

The concept of microservices has gained increasing popularity since 2014. Almost during the same period, container technology keeps developing and is considered as an excellent way to build microservices-based applications. Mainstream public cloud vendors such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform all provide users with container-based solutions to implementing microservices. Workspace as a Service (WaaS) proposed by An et al. is another approach which uses containers to serve users. Both container-based microservices and WaaS are used to effectively utilize cluster resources via maintaining a number of containers. In this paper, we compare the designing ideas and supporting platforms of these two approaches, which provides a perspective for cluster administrators and users to understand the scenarios where to use them and how to make an appropriate choice to meet their needs. We find that container-based microservices are more suitable for professional IT companies while WaaS fits education and research institutions better.