On Thursday, Google and Red Hat announced that Red Hat’s OpenShift Dedicated container application platform would soon be available on the Google Cloud Platform.

According to a Google blog post, the timeline is “in the next few months.” The post also said that Google Compute Engine (GCE) is a certified environment for Red Hat, and also noted the company’s work with the open source container cluster manager Kubernetes and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, an initiative focused on supporting cloud native application development-.

According to the post: “In this initial phase, you’ll have access to improved support for containers using Kubernetes and OpenShift, as well as access to powerful GCP services designed to help you make better use of data.”

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The services are explained in a little more detail as big data, analytics and storage. One of those services could be Google Cloud Platform’s data scalability tool, Cloud Bigtable.

Furthermore, the post said that both Google and Red Hat have heard from customers who plan to move to containers for the following reasons:

  • Improved security
  • Services and ecosystem
  • Dynamic scheduling
  • Storage
  • Cross cloud portability and hybrid deployments

Additionally, the service will be “underpinned by Red Hat Enterprise Linux,” which Google came out in support of in 2014 when it joined the Red Hat Cloud Access program.

The Kubernetes focus makes sense, too, as Red Hat has been a major contributor to the project since its start back in the summer of 2014. Back then, Red Hat’s stated goal in contributing was to support products that could advance an open hybrid cloud.

The partnership between the two companies has existed for some time, and this recent announcement will only strengthen it. In fact, Red Hat’s former CTO, Brian Stevens, is now the vice president of cloud platforms at Google.

The announcement will win Google some points in the enterprise for its cloud offering as the Google Cloud Platform is often criticized as lacking some of the tools and features of Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure–and it appears to be running a clear third to those two platforms in enterprise adoption.

Those interested in learning more about deploying OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud Platform can sign up for information here. No pricing has been announced.

The 3 big takeaways

  1. Google Cloud Platform gains enterprise clout with a useful integration for Red Hat shops.
  2. The relationship between Red Hat and Google continues to deepen with Red Hat investing heavily in Google’s Kubernetes and Google supporting Red Hat products like RHEL.
  3. OpenShift was originally launched primarily on AWS, so Red Hat gets access to a broader customer base by adding Google Cloud Platform to the mix.