7 days ago
Red Hat named leader for multicloud container platforms by Forrester
Red Hat has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Multicloud Container Platforms, Q3 2025 report, based on its performance in the multicloud container platform market.
Forrester's assessment
The Forrester Wave report evaluated several vendors in the multicloud container platform market, focusing on both the current offering and company strategy categories. Red Hat was highlighted for scoring the highest among all evaluated vendors in these categories.
The report described OpenShift as "a good fit for enterprises that prioritise support, reliability, and advanced engineering, particularly in regulated industries such as financial services." It also observed that "customers consistently praise Red Hat's enterprise-grade offerings and support, especially for managed services."
Forrester noted Red Hat's capabilities in Kubernetes, saying, "Red Hat excels in core Kubernetes areas, offering robust operator options, powerful management, GitOps automation, and flexible interfaces via a GUI or command-line interface (CLI). OpenShift's SLAs of 99.95% for public cloud managed-service versions showcase Red Hat's capacity to engineer capabilities beyond those of native public cloud services."
The report additionally stated, "Developers will find just about everything they need with Red Hat's above-par scores in developer experience, service and application catalogues, microservices, service mesh, DevOps automation, and integration."
Technical focus and AI integration
Beyond container management, Red Hat is extending its efforts in hybrid cloud solutions. The company is leveraging its stack - including Red Hat Enterprise Linux - to improve support for generative AI development and operations, with an emphasis on model serving and advanced inference.
Customer priorities and market needs
The report noted that OpenShift has demonstrated suitability for organisations operating in highly regulated industries, such as financial services, where support and reliability are considered essential. The platform's managed services, which offer defined service-level agreements, were singled out for positive feedback from customers. The importance of a strong enterprise support model for public cloud deployments was also highlighted in the analysis.
Leadership statement Mike Barrett, Vice President & General Manager, Hybrid Cloud Platforms, Red Hat, said: "Red Hat continues to provide the leading platform for organisations navigating the complexities of multicloud environments. Being named a Leader in The Forrester WaveTM for Multicloud Container Platforms reinforces our commitment to delivering robust, enterprise-grade solutions that empower our customers to innovate with confidence across their hybrid cloud footprints. Our focus on core Kubernetes capabilities, strong developer experience and strategic AI integrations positions us well for the evolving needs of the market. Sovereign cloud, coupled with the digital independence required to get the most from AI, have made multicloud investments a leading priority for our global customers."
Developer perspective
The Forrester evaluation recognised Red Hat's OpenShift for the breadth of its support for developers, including tooling for DevOps automation, service catalogues, and integration features. The solution was described as delivering above-average scores in developer experience, microservices, and service mesh capabilities.
Market context
As enterprise IT organisations continue to adopt hybrid and multicloud strategies, platforms capable of delivering consistent operations and supporting evolving application needs are increasingly important. The 99.95% public cloud managed service SLA cited by Forrester underlines the attention to reliability and service continuity expected in this sector.
Red Hat continues to broaden the reach of its hybrid cloud portfolio, applying the foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to support both traditional enterprise workloads and emerging technologies such as generative AI.
