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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

"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."
"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."
"There is no installation for this product because it is a cloud product."
"An advantage of IBM Public Cloud is the bare metal server. We can take the bare metal server. It's not shared with anyone. We can deploy our applications without sharing them with anyone. That is an advantage of IBM Public Cloud."
"One of the features that I really like about IBM Cloud is the flexibility where you can order your own hardware."
"The initial setup was very easy. It's quite straightforward. Deployment took about fifteen minutes. Everything is well organized."
"It is easy to deploy what you need for the initial setup"
"It's straightforward, has a good environment and is cost-effective."
"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."
"I have seen a return on investment, and it depends upon the types and the nature of some of the most critical applications that have been hosted on the OpenShift infrastructure."
"The security is good."
"Two stand-out features are the security model and value-add features that don't exist in Upstream Kubernetes."
"A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes."
"OpenShift offers robust tools for monitoring application traffic, allowing us to analyze client requests and other business-related metrics."
"The stability has been good."
"We have found the cluster management function to be very good with this product."
 

Cons

"It could be more secure."
"Support could be improved."
"The initial setup and the pricing are areas that need improvement."
"The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."
"There is not a lot of support for this solution, which is something that needs to be improved."
"While they have about 99% of what we need, the only exception, perhaps, was the push notification feature that was discontinued. They delayed the replacement product."
"Normally, for any cloud, we get a lot of information on the web, but that is missing in the case of IBM Public Cloud. We need some technical support documents. That is the only thing missing in IBM Public Cloud."
"An enhancement to consider for the future might involve incorporating a comprehensive solution for CI/CD tailored specifically for OpenShift."
"The solution needs to support the new features in Kubernetes more quickly."
"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."
"The platform's documentation could be more comprehensive to cover the full spectrum of user needs. Sometimes, achieving specific goals is challenging due to a lack of detailed guidance."
"Room for improvement is around the offerings that come as a bundle with the container platform. The packaging of the platform should be done such that customers do not have to purchase additional licenses."
"Not a ten because it's not a standard solution and the endpoint protection user has to prepare with documentation or have training from other people. It's not easy to start because it's not like other solutions."
"The product’s integration with Windows containers and other third-party products needs improvement."
"Managing batches in Red Hat OpenShift has been a significant challenge."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."
"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."
"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."
"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The cost is quite high."
"The product has reasonable pricing."
"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."
"My company makes payments towards the licensing costs attached to OpenShift."
"The pricing for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400."
"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."
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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.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.