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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
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
18
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
62
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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
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 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 availability is second to none. Customer support is very good."
"There is no installation for this product because it is a cloud product."
"It's straightforward, has a good environment and is cost-effective."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations."
"One of the features that I really like about IBM Cloud is the flexibility where you can order your own hardware."
"This is a predictable and dependable service."
"The initial setup was very easy. It's quite straightforward. Deployment took about fifteen minutes. Everything is well organized."
"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."
"Red Hat OpenShift helped us with managing scaling up and scaling down."
"The scalability of OpenShift combined with Kubernetes is good. At least from the software standpoint, it becomes quite easy to handle the scalability through configuration. You need to constantly monitor the underlying infrastructure and ensure that it has adequate provisioning. If you have enough infrastructure, then managing the scalability is quite easy which is done through configuration."
"The concept of containers and scaling on demand is a feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat OpenShift."
"OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes."
"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."
"It's cloud agnostic and the containerization and security features are outstanding."
"We are currently dealing with both local support and Red Hat support, and they have been amazing."
 

Cons

"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 initial setup and the pricing are areas that need improvement."
"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."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"There is not a lot of support for this solution, which is something that needs to be improved."
"The product should offer more computing, similar to Amazon."
"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."
"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."
"Needs work on volume handling (although this is already better with GlusterFS). Security (SSSD) would also be an improvement."
"The speed of deploying new applications can be improved."
"While Red Hat OpenShift is stable, monitoring and reporting capabilities need improvement. Integration with tools like Grafana and Prometheus is necessary for capturing logs, and manually managing these aspects is time-consuming."
"Some of the storage services and integrations with third-party tools should be made possible."
"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."
"The monitoring part could be better to monitor the performance."
"OpenShift can improve monitoring. Sometimes there are issues. Additionally, the solution could benefit from protective tools if something was to happen in our network."
"Documentation and technical support could be improved. The product is good, but when we raise a case with support—say we are having an image issue—the support is not really up to the mark. It is difficult to get support... When we raise a case, their support people will hesitate to get on a call or a screen-sharing session. That is a major drawback when it comes to OpenShift."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
"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."
"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or 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."
"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."
"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"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 product's support is expensive. I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We had a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) license for all our servers' operating systems. By having multiple Red Hat products together, you can negotiate costs and leverage on having a sort of enterprise license agreement to reduce the overall outlay or TCO."
"The pricing for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400."
"The cost is quite high."
"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."
"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."
"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
 

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 ...
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.
What do you like most about IBM Public Cloud?
The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations.
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: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.