Red Hat Partners With Microsoft & IBM for Hybrid Cloud Power
SAN FRANCISCO -- Red Hat Summit -- Red Hat is strengthening its multicloud portfolio, with new ties to two of the biggest public cloud providers, Microsoft and IBM, the companies said Tuesday.
Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) are jointly bringing OpenShift -- Red Hat's Kubernetes container management platform that runs on public and private clouds -- to Microsoft Azure public cloud. The joint platform will allow enterprise developers to run container-based applications across Microsoft Azure and on-premises, the two companies said.
Red Hat OpenShift on Azure will bring the benefits of hybrid cloud to Kubernetes containerized applications -- on-premises control and regulatory compliance, combined with the flexibility, scalability and global reach of the Azure public cloud, the two companies said. The platform will also allow developers to run Kubernetes container apps on both Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
The two companies will integrate Microsoft SQL Server with Red Hat OpenShift, including SQL Server as a Red Hat certified container for deployment on either Red Hat OpenShift on Azure and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform across the hybrid cloud, including on-premises Azure Stack, the companies said.
And Visual Studio Enterprise and Visual Studio Professional subscribers will get Red Hat Enterprise Linux credit, allowing developers to work in .NET, Java and the most popular open source frameworks.
The partnership is part of a multi-year transition for both companies -- Microsoft moving from being an open source hater to a full-throated supporter, and Red Hat extending from its Linux roots to the cloud. (See How Microsoft Became an Unlikely Open Source Champion and Microsoft Is a 'Deeply Open Source Company,' Says Azure CTO Russinovich.)
Additionally, Red Hat and IBM are partnering to allow enterprises to build applications spanning IBM Cloud Private and Red Hat OpenShift, using IBM cloud-based services such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and blockchain. IBM will extend its private cloud platforms, IBM Cloud Private and IBM Cloud Private for Data, to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform as Red Hat certified containers. (See IBM Cloud Private Extends Big Blue's Hybrid Reach.)
IBM and Red Hat note that they have partnered for more than 20 years.
Red Hat has been pushing out into the public cloud for some time. A year ago, the company launched OpenShift.io, an online development environment that runs on Red Hat's own OpenShift Online cloud as well as Google, Microsoft and Amazon public clouds. (See Red Hat Looks to Take the Pain From Kubernetes & Containers.)
Red Hat and Amazon partnered on OpenShift Container Platform at the same time.
Red Hat has also just described how it's improving operations automation for OpenShift, based on tools from its CoreOS acquisition in January. (See Red Hat Beefs Up OpenShift Automation, Based on CoreOS Acquisition.)
The Red Hat, Microsoft, IBM and AWS partnerships are part of an ongoing trend as public cloud providers partner with enterprise vendors to offer a complete hybrid cloud story. VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) is partnering with AWS to offer the VMWare virtualization platform on-premises and in the AWS cloud. Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), meanwhile, is partnering with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). (See AWS & VMware Vs. Cisco & Google: A Cloud Fight Worth Watching.)
— Mitch Wagner 
Executive Editor, Light Reading
