Red Hat Advances Private PaaS for the Enterprise

Just about every IT organization is building out a private cloud computing platform as part of a larger cloud computing strategy that will include internal and external resources. The challenge is figuring out how make that happen in the shortest amount of time possible.

For that reason, interest in platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings in the enterprise is on the upswing, which is creating something of a frenzy among IT vendors trying to ensure their relevancy in a new age of enterprise computing. This week, Red Hat shored up its position with the delivery of OpenShift Enterprise 2, a PaaS offering intended to be deployed by internal IT organizations as a private cloud.

According to Dan Juengst, director of OpenShift PaaS product marketing at Red Hat, OpenShift Enterprise 2 provides the benefits of a multi-tenant cloud computing platform in a framework that essentially rolls up a lot of enterprise IT technologies in a way that makes them more consumable. Built on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and running on top of the core open source OpenShift Origin PaaS software that Red Hat developed, Juengst says OpenShift Enterprise 2 makes it a lot easier for internal IT organizations to roll out a private cloud by eliminating the need to integrate disparate technologies.

The latest release of OpenShift Enterprise, adds Juengst, includes a range of tools designed to simplify the management of OpenShift, including a new administrative console, better team collaboration capabilities and integration with OpenStack, which is the cornerstone of the Red Hat IT management strategy.

The team collaboration capabilities, notes Juengst, are particularly significant at a time when many organizations are wrestling with DevOps challenges that require developers and IT operations teams to work more closely. Rather than bolting on a DevOps management platform, Juengst says Red Hat is making the case that DevOps should be a core component of any PaaS deployment.

Ultimately, Juengst says that what distinguishes OpenShift from other PaaS platforms is its ability to support a full range of programming languages, including Java, Ruby, Python, PHP and Perl and now Node.js for server-side JavaScript, and investments in application container technologies that make applications running on OpenShift Enterprise 2 more secure. Those applications, adds Juengst, can then be deployed either on a public cloud or on a public cloud service managed by Red Hat.

Regardless of where the private PaaS is actually deployed, the end goal for moving to PaaS is to reduce the total cost of operating the enterprise IT while at the same time making the overall environment more flexible. IT organizations have multiple PaaS options available to make that happen. Now it comes down to figuring out which one provides the greatest amount of extensibility across an inherently hybrid cloud computing environment at a price point they can afford.