Red Hat OpenShift Enterprise Aims to Bring PaaS to On-Premise

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) has launched a new PaaS for enterprises. The new OpenShift Enterprise offering was designed to be installed as an on-premise solution within customers' private, public and hybrid cloud data centers.

This follows up on Red Hat's announcement of an on-premise PaaS offering in May 2012. OpenShift Enterprise was designed with enterprise customers in mind and provides enterprise users with access to a cloud-based application platform. The end result, according to the company with the chapeau rouge, is a cloud-based application platform that makes it easier for enterprises to build applications run them in a cloud architecture.

OpenShift Enterprise is built on open source technologies including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Open Shift Origin. It's also based on the OpenShift PaaS service that Red Hat has had in free beta since May 2011. That means the company has had plenty of time to work out any kinks, so hopefully customers will get a polished version of the software that meets their needs.

"This product offers our customers further freedom and choice in the cloud with the backing of Red Hat's full stack and open source leadership. Developers are now able to choose among leading application development languages and tools for the job, and IT operations leaders can choose to deliver these application stacks to their enterprise on their choice of clouds in compliance with their security, governance and compliance requirements," said Ashesh Badani, general manager of the cloud business unit and OpenShift at Red Hat, in a prepared statement.

Available now to partners in North America, the United Kingdom and continental Europe, Red Hat has plans to launch OpenShift Enterprise globally in the future.

Industry research firms expect the worldwide PaaS market to continue to grow at rapid rates, providing vendors and channel partners with further opportunities to bring their customers into the PaaS fold.