IBM hosts Red Hat OpenStack on its own private cloud

IBM and Red Hat have joined forces to offer enterprises a place to host their OpenStack workloads and Red Hat Ceph Storage in the cloud.

As part of the strategic agreement, businesses will be able to use IBM's private cloud to run their Red Hat OpenStack platform, extending their on-premise workloads to a hybrid environment. The move will help companies comply with data residency and regulatory laws too, with the scalability companies demand from a hybrid infrastructure, the firms said.

In exchange, IBM has become a Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider, giving enterprises the reassurance their implementation will provide the flexibility and security businesses require.

"Our collaboration with IBM is aimed at helping enterprise customers more quickly and easily embrace hybrid cloud,” said Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager of OpenStack, Red Hat.

“Now, customers who don’t have in-house expertise to manage an OpenStack infrastructure can more confidently consume Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Ceph Storage on IBM Private Cloud.”

Red Hat will also offer its Red Hat Cloud Access on IBM Private Cloud, helping businesses migrate existing workloads and Red Hat subscriptions to the cloud service. They will also be able to take advantage of a pay-as-you-go model, making significant cost savings.

“A cloud-first strategy has become the new normal for a majority of our enterprise clients worldwide who are leveraging IBM Cloud as a key driver for digital transformation," said Zane Adam, vice president of IBM Cloud.

“The strategic collaboration between IBM and Red Hat is designed to enable clients to more easily adopt open source products and OpenStack cloud software while preserving their existing investments and creating new business opportunities.”