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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
18th
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
72
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (6th), Container Management (7th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.5%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 7.4%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat OpenShift7.4%
IBM Public Cloud3.5%
Other89.1%
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."
"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."
"Anytime I need something they are dependable and willing to help me out."
"There is no installation for this product because it is a cloud product."
"This product is very good because it is accessible in remote locations, and anyone can deploy from any place."
"I am very much satisfied with the technical support team at 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."
"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."
"What I like best about OpenShift is that it can reduce some of the costs of having multiple applications because you can just move them into small container applications."
"The solution is easy to scale."
"OpenShift offers robust tools for monitoring application traffic, allowing us to analyze client requests and other business-related metrics."
"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 best features Red Hat OpenShift offers are scalability so you can scale to workload, as well as providing redundancy."
"The virtualization of my APIs means I no longer have to pay VMware large amounts of money to only run in-house solutions."
"Valuable features include time to market, avoiding vendor lock-in, and the ease of working in a multi-cloud environment."
 

Cons

"It could be more secure."
"Maybe performance enhancers and reports could be better improved. Of all the drawbacks I saw, this would be the biggest enhancement."
"The solution needs to be more autonomous. It should let the DL go to allow for more jobs on the cloud."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."
"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."
"They do not have a very good virtual network implemented, and the VPC is the most important feature that needs to 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."
"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."
"We want to see better alerting, especially in critical situations requiring immediate intervention. Until we go to the dashboard, it can be challenging to quickly recognize that there's an issue for us to deal with. Therefore, a popup of the event or a tweaked GUI to catch our attention when it's alerting would be a welcome change. Everything else is good. We don't need any additional features. From the operations perspective, as an administrator, there is nothing concerning."
"I had to frequently upgrade my cluster due to OpenShift's rolling updates every six months, which I found to be excessive."
"I want easier node management and more user-friendly scripts for installing master and worker nodes."
"OpenShift could improve by providing the ability to integrate with public cloud platforms. This way we can easily use the services that these platforms offer. For instance, Amazon AWS. However, all the three major hyper-scalers solutions offer excellent DevOps and CI/CD tooling. If there was an easy way to integrate with them it would be beneficial. We need a way to easily integrate with the monitoring and dashboard services that they provide."
"The security model is hard to understand and use."
"One area for improvement is the documentation. They need to make it a little bit more user-friendly. Also, if you compare certain features and the installation process with Rancher, Rancher is simpler."
"Needs work on volume handling (although this is already better with GlusterFS). Security (SSSD) would also be an improvement."
"The whole area around the hybrid cloud could be improved. I would like to deploy a Red Hat OpenShift cluster on-premise and on the cloud, then have Red Hat do the entire hybrid cloud management."
 

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 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."
"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."
"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."
"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."
"We use the license-free version of Red Hat Openshift but we pay for the support."
"My company makes payments towards the licensing costs attached to OpenShift."
"The product’s pricing is expensive."
"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."
"Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."
"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 product's support is expensive. I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
University
10%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise56
 

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: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.