Red Hat Openshift - a hosted solution for K8s or a managed platform for K8s?

Hi @josepmaria,

I can see how the availability of so many Kubernetes solutions can cause confusion among the platform types.

Red Hat OpenShift became famous as a "hosted" solution, because it offered easy installation and integration with on-premises and cloud infrastructures and services. This allowed the consumer to decide where and how OpenShift was installed, configured, and operated.

In an effort to ease the way it is made available to its clients and how it is monetized as a cloud service, a cloud services provider like AWS may advertise it as part of its catalog of cloud services offerings. In addition, the cloud services provider may take this solution a step further, and alternatively offer it as "managed" solution, competing with the Red Hat's own "managed" OpenShift Dedicated offering.

In this context, at a very high level, the major difference is who has ownership over the product itself (OpenShift), and the level of access (permissions) to its core components for regular maintenance, upgrades, etc. A managed solution assumes the consumer surrenders ownership, maintenance, upgrades, etc. to the solution provider for a cost at a pre-determined rate. This competition between cloud services providers forces the offerings to continuously change and adapt to the needs of clients in the industry, hence trying to be a one-stop shop for all customer needs and offer both hosted and managed solutions under the same roof.

Hope this clarifies the differences between platform types.

Regards,
-Chris