What is a hyperscaler?

Hyperscalers provide cloud computing and data management services to organizations that require vast infrastructure for large-scale data processing and storage. While there is no universal standard for what should be classified as a hyperscaler, major cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud,Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud fit the description.

Hyperscalers get their name from hyperscale computing, a method of processing data that allows for software architecture to scale and grow as increased demand is added to the system.

Enterprise applications and data demand flexible environments that offer a reliable way to develop and deploy technologies such as artificial intelligence, internet of things (IoT), machine learning, and big data analytics. Hyperscalers are able to support these services on a grand scale, using multiple datacenters around the world, with thousands of physical servers running millions of virtual machines. 

By providing access to a ready-made, scalable infrastructure, hyperscalers allow their clients the ability to experiment, build, innovate, and run any type of application, from a social network to a smart city to online banking, all while managing costs and working with agility. In addition, outsourcing infrastructure management frees developers to focus on building applications and gives operations teams more time to focus on innovation rather than maintenance.

In order for an app dev platform to successfully serve its user, it must provide continuous and secure development and deployment capabilities. The tools that may be utilized as part of the developers kit can include front-end tools for UI/UX creation, back-end tools for data services, or both.

If you’re just starting out on your digital transformation journey, figuring out the best path forward can be daunting. Lack of in-house resources, time, or expertise make it challenging to build effective cloud architectures from scratch, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. In fact, many of the world’s largest enterprises use hyperscalers, and often choose more than one hyperscaler to partner with based on their individual business needs. Using more than one cloud provider is known as a multicloud approach. Unifying different clouds as a single platform supports a hybrid cloud strategy–in which applications work consistently across different environments, allowing for a single computing platform to span multiple clouds. 

When it comes to deciding who to partner with, cloud committed spend is something to keep in mind. "Cloud committed spend" refers to an agreement between a provider and a customer to provide a discount on cost in exchange for the customer agreeing to spend a certain amount of money within a (typically) specified period of time. Basically, it’s a bulk discount offer: the more you buy, the bigger the savings. 

Cloud providers have hundreds of partners with software and services, available in cloud marketplaces, that can be purchased using committed spend. For example, if you have cloud committed spend with Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure, you can use it to pay for Red Hat® OpenShift®, Red Hat Enterprise Linux®, and Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform.

Self-managed solutions

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform addresses key automation use cases across the enterprise such as network, security, cloud, and edge automation. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, available for Microsoft Azure and AWS, helps reduce operational cost, improve security, and meet compliance requirements.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certified for use with all major cloud service providers, including Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud, as well as on hundreds of other public cloud and service providers, and thousands of other types of software and hardware. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a stable foundation for your cloud environments by offering consistency across infrastructure. This means you can deploy apps, workloads, and services with agility and streamline management across environments using the same set of tools. 

Managed solutions

Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS is a fully managed application platform that allows you to focus on delivering value to your customers by building and deploying applications. Red Hat and AWS Site reliability engineering (SRE) experts manage the underlying platform so you don’t have to worry about the complexity of infrastructure management. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS provides seamless integration with a wide range of AWS compute, database, analytics, machine learning, networking, mobile, and other services to further accelerate the building and delivering of differentiating experiences to your customers.

Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift is an application platform that provides highly available, fully managed Red Hat OpenShift clusters on demand. Red Hat and Microsoft jointly engineer, manage, and support the platform, allowing organizations to increase operational efficiency, refocus on innovation, and quickly build, deploy, and scale applications.