Red Hat, Microsoft Make OpenShift an Azure Service

… Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 and OpenShift 4. The partnership with Azure is another part of the strategy.

The OpenShift Azure service, which is available now, also will be a help to channel partners, according to Sean Roberts, senior vice president and general manager of public cloud services at Ensono, a hybrid cloud service provider that counts Microsoft, IBM and AWS among its partners.

Ensono’s Sean Roberts

“The challenge all channel partners face in public cloud is the same as our customers — keeping up with the rapid change of technology,” Roberts told Channel Futures. “Adding OpenShift as a native service to Azure will reduce complexity of the solution, which leads to better outcomes for customers and more scalable services for channel partners.”

The tighter partnership between Red Hat and Microsoft also is an indication that IBM plans to follow through on promises to keep Red Hat independent after Big Blue completes its $34 billion acquisition of the software company. That’s a good thing, according to Roberts.

“We all feared that IBM might accidentally destroy the enterprise value of the very thing it bought by imposing top-down edicts and processes,” he said. “Thankfully so far, this seems to be a hands-off approach akin to that being adopted by Microsoft with LinkedIn and GitHub. This gives IBM the best of both worlds — continued innovation with an opportunity to engage a new category of customer.”

Endpoint Associates’ Kay agreed, adding that “IBM has seen the value of open platforms all along the way, and that philosophy is pretty deeply entrenched there. I think IBM will keep RedHat open and maintain it as a reliable partner.”

IBM President and CEO Ginni Rometty reiterated that stance during the keynote address at the Red Hat Summit. Speaking with Red Hat President and CEO Jim Whitehurst, Rometty spoke about IBM’s longstanding commitment to open technologies and how she plans to accelerate that with Red Hat in the fold.

“Red Hat should stay an independent unit,” Rometty said to the applause of the about 8,000 attendees at the Red Hat Summit. “The whole of any open platform that is buy by everyone is that it means everyone.”