Red Hat Ups Its Cloud Game with PaaS and Cloud Management Offerings

Today Red Hat announced two new services: CloudForms, a cloud management product for private and hybrid clouds and OpenShift, a multiple platform-as-a-service. CloudForms is now acceping beta sign-ups and OpenShift is open for non-production use.

Surprisingly, Red Hat is not yet open-sourcing the code used to create these services, but according to RedMonk’s Stephen O’Grady the company promises to release OpenShift’s code in the future.

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CloudForms

According to RedHat, CloudForms offers:

• Automation and self-service that deliver the elasticity and flexibility of cloud computing
• Comprehensive application lifecycle management that lets administrators retain the ability to control and govern their application portfolio in the cloud
• Tools and capabilities that address the key problems with first-generation cloud products: the cost and complexity of virtual server sprawl, compliance nightmares and security concerns
• Configuration and management of complex multi-tier applications, without the need to independently manage large numbers of virtual servers
• The ability to deploy, manage and move these applications between different clouds, virtualization environments, and baremetal servers

OpenShift

The “Express” version of OpenShift offers PHP, Python, Ruby. The “Flex’ version offers more configuration features and supports PHP, Java EE, MySQL, MongoDB, Memcache, DFS. A third version, “Power,” is forthcoming and will offer even more custom configuration.

In November, Red Hat acquired Java PaaS provider Makara. According to O’Grady, “Post acquisition, CEO Issac Roth was tasked with building out Red Hat’s PaaS capabilities and given access to resources across the company, including personnel from Red Hat internal IT and the support teams. OpenShift is the result of those efforts.”

O’Grady writes that OpenShift is designed specifically to prevent lock-in. “With regard to lock-in and the cloud, Red Hat and its customers’ needs are aligned: both are afraid of users being locked into closed platforms,” O’Grady writes. “If you talk to potential cloud adopters, the risk of being locked in is front-and-center alongside traditional enterprise concerns such as security and compliance.”

OpenShift will go up against established players such as Microsoft Azure, Salesforce.com’s Heroku and VMware’s Cloud Foundry as well as many startups such as Engine Yard, Orchestra and PHP Fog.

Also, we reported earlier today on HP’s PaaS plans.

Discuss