Not too long ago, IBM positioned itself as a competitor to Amazon Web Services, the retailer's dominant cloud computing platform. A new team-up between Amazon and IBM's newly-acquired Red Hat subsidiary shows that things may be changing.
On Thursday, Red Hat and Amazon Web Services announced an extension of their existing partnership to deliver a version of OpenShift, a key Red Hat product, on Amazon Web Services. OpenShift is used to help developers write code once, that can then run across multiple cloud providers or data centers with minimal change to the code. Today, over 2,000 customers use OpenShift.
Notably, OpenShift is built on Kubernetes, a popular cloud computing software project started at Google that's since become something of a standard for running large-scale applications.
This new team-up is one of the first major moves to come out of Red Hat since Arvind Krishna was appointed CEO at IBM. But Sathish Balakrishnan, vice of hosted platforms at Red Hat, says that it's really proof that the company — which IBM acquired for $34 billion — is making good on its promises of independence from Big Blue.
"IBM is keeping Red Hat neutral," Balakrishnan said. "This is great validation. They have their own cloud but they didn't come in the way to prevent this from happening."
While IBM still offers its own cloud, this collaboration could be a sign that it may stop trying to play catch-up and take a different approach with hybrid cloud, which allows customers to run their applications on both the cloud and private data centers. Krishna has named the hybrid cloud, along with artificial intelligence, as a key focus for the company.
Red Hat's OpenShift runs on AWS, Microsoft, and IBM
With this offering, customers can quickly build and run applications on AWS using Red Hat's Kubernetes service OpenShift, as well as AWS's tools for storage, databases, analytics, machine learning, and the like. Customers can also use this product to run their applications under a hybrid cloud model.
"We understand that the world is going hybrid," Balakrishnan said. "It becomes complex for enterprises to navigate this scenario...We make sure Kubernetes works well in all these areas."
Red Hat had been offering a managed Kubernetes service on AWS since 2015, but this expanded partnership makes it easier for customers to pay for and use. The new OpenShift will be available under a preview program soon, the companies say.
Meanwhile, Balakrishnan says that when Google first introduced Kubernetes to the world, Red Hat "jumped on it." Both Red Hat and Google offered Kubernetes services from the beginning, and eventually other companies like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and VMware hopped aboard.
Red Hat already has a similar offering with Microsoft's Azure cloud, and Balakrishnan says offering OpenShift on AWS will increase its adoption and attract AWS customers. Now that OpenShift is on AWS, Microsoft, and IBM, Balakrishnan hopes to give customers more choice in using hybrid cloud.
"We have a pretty extensive customer base running mission critical applications," Balakrishnan said. "Customers are always looking for, how can I extend this hybrid cloud platform and use it more efficiently? Customers have been asking us and AWS on if there's something that can remove the friction."
Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at rmchan@bjinnox.com, Signal at 646.376.6106, Telegram at @rosaliechan, or Twitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request.
