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IBM Public Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Public Cloud
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
17th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
IoT Platforms (3rd)
Red Hat OpenShift
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (11th), Container Management (10th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (5th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.0%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 9.5%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat OpenShift9.5%
IBM Public Cloud3.0%
Other87.5%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Premnath Jaganathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Uop Ipl
Affordability and security improve our cloud experience while learning new systems
I'm not working with any AI features in IBM Public Cloud, but they are in the process of building it.I am very satisfied with the security that IBM Public Cloud provides. I would rate IBM Public Cloud eight out of ten, where one is worst and ten is the best.
Pratul Shukla - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Adopting a flexible and efficient approach with noticeable improvements in operational costs and continued challenges in job management
Currently, one of the biggest challenges we face is with services and jobs. For spawning batches, although it has crons, it is not easy to integrate with enterprise systems such as Autosys. The entire company uses Autosys, but we are not able to integrate it effectively. We need intermediate servers to run OC utility commands and initiate the cron job. We have to do a lot of modifications to ensure our batches work properly. With physical or virtual servers, even in AWS, we are able to write and manage multiple jobs. Managing batches in Red Hat OpenShift has been a significant challenge. Integrating third parties is a challenge with Red Hat OpenShift. For example, with Elasticsearch, onboarding itself was difficult, running file beats and dealing with routing issues. It is not straightforward, especially since we have some components in AWS as. AWS has many capabilities that come out of the box and are easier to work with compared to Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat OpenShift's biggest disadvantage is they do not provide any private cloud setup where we can host on our site using their services. The main reason we went with Red Hat OpenShift was because it is a private cloud, and we have regulatory requirements that prevent us from using public cloud.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It's straightforward, has a good environment and is cost-effective."
"The beauty of cloud service providers, especially public cloud service providers, is that they are scalable every time when you need them because their payment model is pay-as-you-go."
"The initial setup was very easy. It's quite straightforward. Deployment took about fifteen minutes. Everything is well organized."
"I've found the stability to be excellent. The performance is good."
"This product is very good because it is accessible in remote locations, and anyone can deploy from any place."
"The price of IBM Cloud is most valuable for us. The service is personable and gives us a good rapport. I can't say it's the best, but it was enough for our needs."
"I am very much satisfied with the technical support team at IBM Public Cloud."
"For non-complex applications, the IBM Cloud works fine and the price is much lower than the competitors."
"Overall, the solution's security throughout the stack and software supply chain is excellent."
"OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes."
"The most valuable feature is the high availability for the applications."
"The security is good."
"Valuable features include time to market, avoiding vendor lock-in, and the ease of working in a multi-cloud environment."
"Provides support throughout the whole platform."
"Security is also an important part of this solution. By default, things are running with limited privileges and securely confined to their own resources. This way, different users and projects can all use the same infrastructure."
"We are able to operate client’s platform without downtime during security patch management each month and provide a good SLA (as scalability for applications is processed during heavy client website load, automatically)."
 

Cons

"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."
"The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition."
"It could be more secure."
"Support could be improved."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The deployment can be a bit of a pain. There are a lot of packages and a lot of options and it can require complex configuration to get it right."
"It will be challenging to implement if you do not have any experience."
"The solution needs to be more autonomous. It should let the DL go to allow for more jobs on the cloud. It could have a better interface as well."
"The operators need a lot of improvement, with better integrations."
"Managing batches in Red Hat OpenShift has been a significant challenge."
"The interface could be simplified a bit more."
"The area for improvement is mostly in support for legacy applications."
"There are challenges related to additional security layers, connectivity compliance for endpoints, and integration."
"The tool lacks some features to make it compliant with Kubernetes"
"While Red Hat OpenShift is stable, monitoring and reporting capabilities need improvement. Integration with tools like Grafana and Prometheus is necessary for capturing logs, and manually managing these aspects is time-consuming."
"My team has found some bugs in OpenShift due to continuous integration, and this is an area for improvement in the platform. RedHat should fix the bugs. Another area for improvement in OpenShift is that upgrading clusters can be challenging, resulting in downtime. Application support also needs improvement in OpenShift because the platform doesn't support all applications in the cloud. I'd like upgraded storage in the next release of OpenShift, especially when I need to do a DR exercise. It would also be good if the platform allows mirroring with another cluster, or more portability in terms of moving applications to another cluster."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."
"IBM Public Cloud is pretty cheap. They have an ongoing free tier that basically won't expire, so as long as your solution is small enough, you can have a test set that you can use for demos, which will cost you almost nothing."
"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."
"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."
"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."
"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"Depending on the extent of the product use, licenses are available for a range of time periods, and are renewable at the end of the period."
"We are currently using the open version, OKD. We plan to get the enterprise version in the future."
"The model of pricing and buying licences is quite rigid. We are in the process of negotiating on demand pricing which will help us take advantage of the cloud as a whole."
"OpenShift is really good when we need to start, but once we get to a certain scale, it becomes too expensive."
"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."
"I don't deal with the cost part, but I know that the cost is very high when compared to other products. They charge for CPU and memory, but we don't worry about it."
"The cost is quite high."
"The product’s pricing is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Public Cloud?
The prices are relatively lower compared to others. It is a good option for medium-sized businesses. However, businesses should also consider other vendors to ensure they meet their specific securi...
What needs improvement with IBM Public Cloud?
The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition.
How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...
Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...
What do you like most about OpenShift?
OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.
 

Also Known As

IBM Bluemix
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County
UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Public Cloud vs. Red Hat OpenShift and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,954 professionals have used our research since 2012.