IBM Public Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

IBM and Red Hat are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. IBM is ranked #15 with an average rating of 6.7, while Red Hat is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3. IBM holds a 3.3% mindshare in PSP, compared to Red Hat’s 12.0% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

IBM Public Cloud

Read 18 IBM Public Cloud reviews

3,048 Views
2,896 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift

Read 62 Red Hat OpenShift reviews

11,427 Views
8,342 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

IBM Public Cloud

Red Hat OpenShift

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

IBM Public Cloud and Red Hat OpenShift are leading products in cloud solutions and container management. IBM Public Cloud stands out for its cost-effective pricing and strong support, while Red Hat OpenShift is preferred for its comprehensive features despite higher costs.

Features: IBM Public Cloud offers global scalability, robust data protection, and AI integration. Red Hat OpenShift features seamless Kubernetes orchestration, enhanced developer tools, and strong integration capabilities, making it a prime choice for container management.

Room for Improvement: IBM could enhance its feature set related to container orchestration and developer tools. Red Hat could work on reducing costs and expanding AI capabilities for better analytics integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM provides a fast scalability model and extensive customer service, making it ideal for enterprises. Red Hat OpenShift focuses on seamless integration with existing systems and offers both robust community support and professional services, excelling in container deployment.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Public Cloud offers competitive pricing with significant ROI through its AI capabilities. Red Hat OpenShift, while potentially more expensive, provides compelling ROI with efficient container management aimed at long-term operational efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Public Cloud vs. Red Hat OpenShift Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Public Cloud vs. Red Hat OpenShift

July 2025

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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

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IoT Platforms (6th)

Red Hat OpenShift

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Virtualization Software (10th), Container Management (12th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.3%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 12.0%, up from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Premnath Jaganathan

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.

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Pratul Shukla

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a scalable product. You can scale it up and down."

"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."

"It provides robust analytics and management tools to give customers complete visibility into their environment and infrastructure."

"One of the features that I really like about IBM Cloud is the flexibility where you can order your own hardware."

"It's straightforward, has a good environment and is cost-effective."

"I've found the stability to be excellent. The performance is good."

"The initial setup was very easy. It's quite straightforward. Deployment took about fifteen minutes. Everything is well organized."

"What I like most in IBM Public Cloud is how easy it is to create serverless functions. They are called IBM functions, but in AWS, they are called Lambda functions. Those are pretty standard, and another thing I like the most is that you have fewer restrictions on the amount of data you can transfer across those functions. IBM Public Cloud is way more flexible than AWS. I also like that IBM Public Cloud is pretty straightforward to integrate. As long as you have all the tools IBM provides you, getting everything up and running is straightforward."

More IBM Public Cloud pros

"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)."

"This solution is providing a platform with OOTB features that are difficult to build from scratch."

"Key features are WildFly, because it standardizes infrastructure and the git repository and docker. Git is essential for source code and Docker for infrastructure."

"Two stand-out features are the security model and value-add features that don't exist in Upstream Kubernetes."

"Overall, the solution's security throughout the stack and software supply chain is excellent."

"The most valuable feature is the auto scalers for all microservices. The feature allows us to place request limits and it is much cheaper than AWS."

"The solution offers ease with which we can define how to run applications and configure them. It's much more convenient than creating a virtual machine and configuring application servers, making the process faster and simpler."

"OpenShift offers more stability than Kubernetes."

More Red Hat OpenShift pros

Cons

"Support could be improved."

"They could improve on customizing reporting capabilities."

"It could be more secure."

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."

"The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition."

"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."

"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."

"They do not have a very good virtual network implemented, and the VPC is the most important feature that needs to be improved."

More IBM Public Cloud cons

"The solution only offers support for one server."

"Autoscaling is a very unique feature, but it could be useful to have more options based on traffic statistics, for example, via Prometheus. So, there should be more ready solutions to autoscale based on specific applications."

"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."

"It would be great if it supported Bitbucket repositories too."

"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization. Some features are missing, such as storage migrations, when compared with VMware."

"One glaring flaw is how OpenShift handles operators. Sometimes operators are forced to go into a particular namespace. When you do that, OpenShift creates an installation plan for everything in that namespace. These operators may be completely separate from each other and have nothing to do with each other, but now they are tied at the hip. You can't upgrade one without upgrading all of them. That's a huge mistake and highly problematic."

"Credential not hidden, so people on the same group can view it."

"OpenShift can improve monitoring. Sometimes there are issues. Additionally, the solution could benefit from protective tools if something was to happen in our network."

More Red Hat OpenShift cons

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."

"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."

"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."

"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."

"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."

"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."

More IBM Public Cloud pricing and cost advice

"The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."

"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."

"The pricing is standard; the solution isn't particularly expensive or affordable."

"My company makes payments towards the licensing costs attached to OpenShift."

"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 pricing for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400."

"We are currently using the open version, OKD. We plan to get the enterprise version in the future."

More Red Hat OpenShift pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

University

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

29%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 ...

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What needs improvement with IBM Cloud?

The front end is not pervasive, so it is very difficult get the status of your current services or account from a mobile device.

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Public Cloud?

The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations.

See all answers

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 ...

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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...

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What do you like most about OpenShift?

OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.

See all answers

Comparisons

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 35% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon AWS vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 15% of the time

Dell ECS vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Google Cloud vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Public Cloud Competitors

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 15% of the time

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

Google Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 6% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Public Cloud

July 2025

Download IBM Public Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift

July 2025

Download Red Hat OpenShift product report

Also Known As

IBM Bluemix

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Overview

IBM Cloud is a full-stack cloud platform that spans public, private and hybrid environments. Build with a robust suite of advanced data and AI tools, and draw on deep industry expertise to help you on your journey to the cloud.

IBM

Red Hat OpenShift offers a robust, scalable platform with strong security and automation, suitable for container orchestration, application deployment, and microservices architecture.

Designed to modernize applications by transitioning from legacy systems to cloud-native environments, Red Hat OpenShift provides powerful CI/CD integration and Kubernetes compatibility. Its security features, multi-cloud support, and source-to-image functionality enhance deployment flexibility. While the GUI offers user-friendly navigation, users benefit from its cloud-agnostic nature and efficient lifecycle management. However, improvements are needed in documentation, configuration complexity, and integration with third-party platforms. Pricing and high resource demands can also be challenging for wider adoption.

What are the key features of Red Hat OpenShift?

Security: Comprehensive security features ensure safe deployments and operations.
Scalability: Auto-scaling and monitoring capabilities cater to high-demand environments.
CI/CD Integration: Seamless integration for efficient continuous deployment processes.
Cloud Compatibility: Supports multi-cloud and on-premise solutions with ease.
GUI: Simplifies platform management and enhances usability.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Improved Efficiency: Streamlined operations reduce time and resource investments.
Enhanced Flexibility: Adapt quickly to changing demands and environments.
Quick Deployment: Fast application deployment supports agile project timelines.
Robust Support: Access to dependable customer support services.

Red Hat OpenShift is strategically implemented for diverse industries focusing on container orchestration and application modernization. Organizations leverage it for migrating applications to cloud-native environments and managing CI/CD pipelines. Its functionality facilitates efficient resource management and microservices architecture adoption, supporting enterprise-level DevOps practices. Users employ it across cloud and on-premises platforms to drive performance improvements.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County

UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton

Buyer's Guide

IBM Public Cloud vs. Red Hat OpenShift

July 2025

Free Report: IBM Public Cloud vs. Red Hat OpenShift

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