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

Download the report

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

Download the complete report

Helped 861,524 peers since 2012

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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"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."

"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."

"This is a predictable and dependable service."

"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."

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

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

"I am very much satisfied with the technical support team at IBM Public Cloud."

More IBM Public Cloud pros

"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."

"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."

"This solution helps us to account for peak seasons involving higher demand than usual. It also gives us confidence in the security of our overall systems."

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

"OpenShift offers an easy-to-use graphical user interface for cluster management, making it more accessible for administrators."

"The initial setup is simple, and OpenShift is open-source, so it's easy to install on any cloud platform."

"The concept of containers and scaling on demand is a feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat OpenShift."

"A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes."

More Red Hat OpenShift pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."

"The product should offer more computing, similar to Amazon."

"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."

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

"It could be more secure."

"They could improve on customizing reporting capabilities."

More IBM Public Cloud cons

"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."

"It could use auto-scaling based on criteria such as transaction volume, queue backlog, etc. Currently, it is limited to CPU and memory."

"There have been some issues with security, in particular, that we had to address. At times they make it “clunky." I am quite confident these parameters will appear in the next releases. They have been reported as bugs and are actually in process."

"There is no orchestration platform in OpenShift."

"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."

"An enhancement to consider for the future might involve incorporating a comprehensive solution for CI/CD tailored specifically for OpenShift."

"The latest 4.0 version of OpenShift disabled a few of the features we previously made use of, although this wasn't a huge deal."

"OpenShift's storage management could be better."

More Red Hat OpenShift cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."

More IBM Public Cloud pricing and cost advice

"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."

"The cost is quite high."

"The solution is cost-effective."

"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."

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

"OpenShift is really good when we need to start, but once we get to a certain scale, it becomes too expensive."

"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."

"We use the license-free version of Red Hat Openshift but we pay for the support."

More Red Hat OpenShift pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

University

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

30%

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 ...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 36% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon AWS vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 14% 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 14% 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

June 2025

Download Red Hat OpenShift product report

Also Known As

IBM Bluemix

No data available

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

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Public Cloud vs. Red Hat OpenShift and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our IBM Public Cloud vs. Red Hat OpenShift report.

See our list of best PaaS Clouds vendors.

We monitor all PaaS Clouds reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.