We’re announcing a new edition of Red Hat OpenShift today - OpenShift Platform Plus - and wanted to provide a little context about why we’re expanding the OpenShift portfolio.

Kubernetes is becoming mainstream. Our customers are growing from a single cluster to multiple clusters that span the globe and run both on-premises and in the cloud. Our customers want to empower their developers and operations teams to build, deploy and run software securely without slowing them down.

With the automated cluster deployment capabilities in OpenShift 4, it’s become easier to create new clusters. In the past, we were treating containers as pets - each one was special and needed to be cared for in its own way. That gets really challenging when you have more than a few containers. We’re seeing the same thing with OpenShift clusters. Customers are creating a lot of them, but treating them as pets rather than cattle.

We have multicluster management capabilities in Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes (ACM). We have a global registry with Red Hat Quay. The StackRox acquisition gave us a complete Kubernetes-native solution for multi-cluster security and compliance, and it makes sense to bring these together for customers that want to scale OpenShift.

What is Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus?

It’s a new edition of Red Hat OpenShift that gives customers a single hybrid cloud platform for innovation without limitation, allowing enterprises to build, deploy, run and manage intelligent applications more securely at scale. Multiple layers of Kubernetes-native security, manageability and automation work across infrastructures to provide consistency throughout the application lifecycle. 

The platform lets business leaders deliver experiences that meet customer needs and drive competitive differentiation, while offering the right tools for developers to code with flexibility and speed. IT operations and security teams can minimize operational risk, improve developer productivity, and support every application spanning multiple infrastructures and clouds. OpenShift Platform Plus brings together everything you need for a DevSecOps approach to manage multiple clusters in a hybrid cloud environment. 

The platform allows business leaders to deliver exceptional experiences without compromising quality or security, and helps developer teams build with speed, agility, confidence, and choice. IT operations and security teams gain the ability to support every application and span multiple infrastructures and clouds, with comprehensive security that enables developer productivity and minimizes operational risk.

It includes four components in a single edition:

• Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, a complete set of services that helps developers code applications with speed while providing flexibility and efficiency for IT operations teams.

• Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes for Kubernetes-native security throughout the entire application lifecycle.

• Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes for extended visibility of your entire Kubernetes domain with built-in governance and application life-cycle management capabilities.

• Red Hat Quay a global registry focused  on cloud-native and DevSecOps development models and environments.

While we offer managed services such as OSD, ARO and ROSA, OpenShift Platform Plus is for customers who want to install and manage OpenShift. It can run on any supported infrastructure or cloud.

Red Hat OpenShift portfolio

Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus adds an edition to the self-managed OpenShift portfolio. We now have three distinct editions: 

• Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Engine
• Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 
• Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus