IBM Corp. and its Red Hat Inc. subsidiary are doubling down on Kubernetes, the orchestrator for software containers, with the introduction today of a software marketplace dedicated to applications that run across hybrid information technology infrastructure and multiple clouds.

The Red Hat Marketplace, which was introduced today, is billed as a “one-stop-shop to find, try, buy, deploy and manage enterprise applications” that run on a variety of public as well as private clouds. Software in the marketplace is instantly available to deploy on any Red Hat OpenShift cluster. The service comes with support for automatic provisioning and monitoring across most major public cloud platforms.

There’s also a private option called Marketplace Select for customers that want tighter control over application options with curated and pre-approved software. Customers can track usage and spending at a department level of all the software deployed across their cloud environments.

Underlying both is Red Hat OpenShift, the company’s version of Kubernetes. Containerized software is portable across all platforms that support containers, which is most of them. OpenShift is a key element in IBM’s strategy of positioning itself as a technology provider that enables customers to use multiple clouds and move workloads across them.

To deploy applications from the Marketplace, “you can register your own clusters in multiple cloud platforms as well as on-premises and installation will be done where you specify,” said Sandesh Bhat, general manager of open cloud technology and applications at IBM.

The service is launching with more than 50 commercial products across 12 different categories, including machine learning, database, security and storage. Initial partners include Anchore Inc., Cockroach Labs Inc., Couchbase Inc., Dynatrace LLC, MemSQL Inc. and MongoDB Inc.

To be included, products must be certified for OpenShift and offered with commercial support. Off-the-shelf capabilities typically include automated installation and upgrades, backup, failover and recovery.

Listings include the certifications the product has earned, verification of a container deployment option, security scan assurance and independent ratings from G2.com Inc. as well as customer reviews. In a nod to corporate procurement operations, IBM is accepting payment both by credit card and purchase order.

Metering is enabled for all purchased software to provide visibility into usage and spending patterns. Products are offered on a variety of consumption schedules, including hourly.

Photo: Jared Smith, Flickr CC