Red Hat Shares — Cloud services basics

The Red Hat Shares newsletter helps IT leaders navigate the complicated world of IT―the open source way.

An introduction to cloud services

Enterprises spent US$178 billion on cloud infrastructure services in 2021, 37% more than in 2020. And “global spending on cloud services is expected to reach over US$482 billion in 2022.” Clearly the use of cloud services is on the rise. But what are cloud services exactly, and why are they beneficial?

Cloud services are infrastructure, platforms, or software that are hosted by third-party providers and made available to users through the internet. They facilitate the flow of user data from front-end clients, through the internet, to the provider’s systems, and back.

Cloud services help organizations speed time to market, reduce operational complexity, and focus on core competencies, just to name a few benefits. Because cloud services eliminate the need to build, manage, and maintain IT infrastructures, developers can instead concentrate on new projects and create and deploy applications more quickly and more frequently. (More on cloud services benefits later.)

You might be wondering what the difference is between cloud services and managed services. A managed service is a bespoke service created for a single organization, hosted and managed by a third party. A cloud service is a ready-made service designed to support many users.

In this first Red Hat Shares issue of 2022, learn what cloud services are, why organizations use them, how to modernize your IT with cloud services, how cloud services can remove hybrid cloud complexity, and more.

First, let’s start with the basics:

Why use cloud services instead of self-managed infrastructure?

How can cloud services help accelerate digital transformation? Find out how IT departments, app dev teams, and organizations as a whole can benefit from cloud services versus self-managed infrastructure.

Modernize your IT with managed cloud services

Learn how to establish your cloud management strategy, simplify cloud management, choose the right managed cloud services provider, and more.

Cloud services help remove hybrid cloud complexity

More than 73% of respondents to this Pulse and Red Hat survey of tech leaders are outsourcing the implementation, maintenance, and optimization of their cloud platforms through cloud services, or plan to within the next year. See what else they said about their approach to hybrid cloud strategies and cloud services preferences.

Andreani Logistics Group responds to rapid growth with Red Hat cloud solution

To meet a 45% increase in shipping demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Andreani scaled its operations by creating a container environment using Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift, a managed cloud solution.

The State of Enterprise Open Source report 2022

See what 1,296 IT leaders told us about the role of enterprise open source in their organizations.

believe enterprise open source is as secure as or more secure than proprietary software.

are more likely to select a vendor who contributes to the open source community.

agree enterprise open source has been instrumental in their organization’s ability to take advantage of hybrid cloud architectures.

Register for Red Hat Summit 2022 | May 10-11

Join us where ideas and innovation meet. Your ticket to Red Hat Summit’s virtual sessions, global networking opportunities, live access to tech experts, and more is here—all at no cost. 

Command Line Heroes: Season 9

Are you afraid of the web? Season 9 of Command Line Heroes shines a light on the horrors of malware—and the security experts who work to keep them at bay.

Compiler asks: Can Kubernetes help people find love?

The Compiler team discusses how container orchestration can help development teams manage, scale, and maintain online dating apps.

Did you miss our December issue recapping 2021 in open source? Check it out. Or browse all past issues of Red Hat Shares.