How IBM’s Cloud Paks offer containerised cloud solutions

Following its acquisition of Red Hat in 2019, IBM transformed its software to be cloud-native and optimised for Red Hat OpenShift.

That’s a benefit IBM is now bringing to customers with its IBM Cloud Pak solutions. IBM offers Cloud Paks for applications, for data, for integration, for automation, for multi-cloud management and for security.

In a press release at the time of their announcement, Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO, Red Hat, said: "Red Hat is unlocking innovation with Linux-based technologies, including containers and Kubernetes, which have become the fundamental building blocks of hybrid cloud environments. This open hybrid cloud foundation is what enables the vision of any app, anywhere, anytime. Combined with IBM's strong industry expertise and supported by a vast ecosystem of passionate developers and partners, customers can create modern apps with the technologies of their choice and the flexibility to deploy in the best environment for the app - whether that is on-premises or across multiple public clouds."

The thinking behind the Cloud Paks is to have containerised solutions that are both more open and more secure, running business applications on any combination of cloud infrastructure, public, private and hybrid, with all major public clouds such as AWS, Azure and GCP supported.

The solution brings security benefits, thanks to being certified by IBM to have the most up to date certifications fully supported.

More recently, the company has partnered with Persistent Systems to accelerate the deployment of its Cloud Paks. In a press release, Cameron Clayton, General Manager Cloud Ecosystem and Weather, IBM, said: "IBM's collaboration with Persistent provides important skills to help enterprise businesses accelerate the migration of their critical workloads to the IBM public cloud. IBM Cloud Paks can help businesses experience the full benefits of modern infrastructure by offering them the flexibility to upgrade applications and accelerate their journeys to the cloud."