Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
IoT Platforms (2nd)
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 (9th), Container Management (9th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (5th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.3%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 8.2%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat OpenShift8.2%
IBM Public Cloud3.3%
Other88.5%
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

"I am very much satisfied with the technical support team at IBM Public Cloud."
"The initial setup was very easy. It's quite straightforward. Deployment took about fifteen minutes. Everything is well organized."
"It provides robust analytics and management tools to give customers complete visibility into their environment and infrastructure."
"There is no installation for this product because it is a cloud product."
"This is a predictable and dependable service."
"One of the features that I really like about IBM Cloud is the flexibility where you can order your own hardware."
"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 most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations."
"A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes."
"The most valuable feature of OpenShift is the security context constraint (SCC). The solution’s security throughout the stack is good. And security context constraints provide port-level security. It's a granular level of control, where you can give privileges to certain users to work on certain applications."
"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."
"Excellent GUI support, so one does not need to use the command line client for almost any tasks. Great support for building images directly from Git repositories with hooks."
"The solution provides a lot of flexibility to the application team for running their applications in the container platform, without needing to monitor the entire infrastructure all the time. It automatically scales and automatically self-heals. There is also a mechanism to alert the team in case it is over-committing or overutilizing the application."
"I would recommend Red Hat OpenShift, especially for its automation capabilities."
"OpenShift offers more stability than Kubernetes."
"The security features of OpenShift are strong when in use of role-based access."
 

Cons

"There is not a lot of support for this solution, which is something that needs to be improved."
"Maybe performance enhancers and reports could be better improved. If they do so, it would be better. Of all the drawbacks I saw, this would be the biggest enhancement."
"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."
"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."
"An area for improvement in IBM Public Cloud is getting up-to-date information on how to set up everything. It's hard to find new documentation."
"They could improve on customizing reporting capabilities."
"It could be more secure."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."
"The monitoring part could be better to monitor the performance."
"It would be great if it supported Bitbucket repositories too."
"The software-defined networking part of it caused us quite a bit of heartburn. We ran into a lot of problems with the difference between on-prem and cloud, where we had to make quite a number of modifications... They've since resolved it, so it's not really an issue anymore."
"OpenShift requires a very expensive and complex infrastructure. These demands can deter people from learning OpenShift."
"The speed of deploying new applications can be improved."
"The metrics in OpenShift can use improvement."
"The product’s integration with Windows containers and other third-party products needs improvement."
"I want easier node management and more user-friendly scripts for installing master and worker nodes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"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."
"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."
"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."
"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
"The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."
"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."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."
"It's important to start small because the solution is scalable. We can build our cluster and look at the bundle option, not the external subscriptions. Talking to the people at Red Hat can save us money."
"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 price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."
"We use the license-free version of Red Hat Openshift but we pay for the support."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.
883,712 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
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 needs improvement with OpenShift?
Areas where Red Hat OpenShift can be improved include the licensing being a bit complex and maybe expensive, as that is something in the hands of the organization's higher management, especially wh...
 

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: March 2026.
883,712 professionals have used our research since 2012.