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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
14th
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
61
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (9th), Container Management (11th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (6th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.3%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 12.2%, up from 11.3% 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.
Mikhael Ibrahim - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly monitor microservices with streamlined DevOps capabilities
Most benefit from it, however, I work with Kubernetes, and installing Vanilla Kubernetes is easy. That said, it introduces many tools that need to be set up individually. OpenShift comes ready out of the box, with all tools installed and configured. Red Hat certifies and confirms that all the components are compatible with each other. OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes. The integrated DevOps capabilities, such as pipelines and the container registry, are extremely beneficial. Additionally, its capability to monitor microservices and containers with integrated tools like Prometheus is a major advantage. The horizontal pod scaling exceeds the scalability features I found in Kubernetes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is a predictable and dependable service."
"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."
"The initial setup was very easy. It's quite straightforward. Deployment took about fifteen minutes. Everything is well organized."
"It is a scalable product. You can scale it up and down."
"I've found the stability to be excellent. The performance is good."
"I am very much satisfied with the technical support team at IBM Public Cloud."
"It provides robust analytics and management tools to give customers complete visibility into their environment and infrastructure."
"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."
"OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes."
"There is a quick deployment of the application, and we can scale out efficiently."
"We want to build a solution that can be deployable to any cloud because of client requirements and OpenShift allows us to do this."
"It is a stable platform."
"Two stand-out features are the security model and value-add features that don't exist in Upstream 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."
"Security is also an important part of this solution. By default, things are running with limited privileges and securely confined to their own resources. This way, different users and projects can all use the same infrastructure."
"A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes."
 

Cons

"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."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"They do not have a very good virtual network implemented, and the VPC is the most important feature that needs to be improved."
"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."
"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."
"There is not a lot of support for this solution, which is something that needs to be improved."
"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."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."
"OpenShift could be improved if it were more accessible for smaller budgets."
"My team has found some bugs in OpenShift due to continuous integration, and this is an area for improvement in the platform. RedHat should fix the bugs. Another area for improvement in OpenShift is that upgrading clusters can be challenging, resulting in downtime. Application support also needs improvement in OpenShift because the platform doesn't support all applications in the cloud. I'd like upgraded storage in the next release of OpenShift, especially when I need to do a DR exercise. It would also be good if the platform allows mirroring with another cluster, or more portability in terms of moving applications to another cluster."
"OpenShift's storage management could be better."
"It would be great if it supported Bitbucket repositories too."
"The operators need a lot of improvement, with better integrations."
"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."
"The area for improvement is mostly in support for legacy applications."
"The solution only offers support for one server."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."
"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."
"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"My company makes payments towards the licensing costs attached to OpenShift."
"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 licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."
"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."
"The pricing is standard; the solution isn't particularly expensive or affordable."
"We use the license-free version of Red Hat Openshift but we pay for the support."
"The product has reasonable pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
University
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.