Red Hat and IBM launch OpenShift software marketplace


Keumars Afifi-Sabet

10 Sep, 2020

Red Hat and its parent company IBM have together launched a one-stop-shop marketplace for customers seeking to run OpenShift enterprise applications on their hybrid cloud infrastructures.

Red Hat Marketplace offers a broad catalogue of more than 50 open-source software, across a dozen categories, available for enterprises to purchase and deploy, including apps in the areas of AI and machine learning, security, and big data, among others.

The marketplace aims to deliver an ecosystem of software from independent vendors so enterprise customers can easily deploy new tools on their hybrid cloud infrastructures, based on Red Hat OpenShift’s container platform. Some of the vendors whose tools are available include CognitiveScale, MongoDB and StorageOS.

“We believe that removing the operational barriers to deploy and manage new tools and technologies can help organizations become more agile in hybrid multi-cloud environments,” said Red Hat’s senior director for technology partnerships, Lars Herrmann.

“The software available on Red Hat Marketplace is tested, certified and supported on Red Hat OpenShift to enable built-in management logic and streamline implementation processes. This helps customers run faster with automated deployments while enjoying the improved scalability, security, and orchestration capabilities of Kubernetes-native infrastructure.”

The companies have also launched a private form of the marketplace, dubbed Red Hat Marketplace Select, available at additional cost for enterprises that want more control and governance over purchases.

The private marketplace allows clients to provide their teams with easy access to curated, pre-approved software, and also tracks usage and spending by departments of all software deployed across hybrid cloud environments.

The marketplace has been devised especially for companies building cloud-native infrastructure and supports the wider drive to cut down on vendor lock-in. Programmes can essentially be deployed across the open hybrid cloud and operate in any environment.

Deployment is automated, too, and purchases will be readily accessible on Red Hat OpenShift consoles, with customers also being offered 24/7 support.

Enterprise customers can access the collection of open-source tools in a metered, pay-per-hour, fashion, with the platform offering a granular understanding of usage and spending patterns. Red Hat claims this payment model allows customers to experiment with an array of tools in early-stage development projects, given there’s no need to commit to any lengthy subscriptions.