Red Hat OpenShift is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution available in two versions: public and private. In the public version the app development, creation, implementation and hosting are in the cloud; in the private one it's possible to implement the Service as a private cloud or on-premise.

The Platform as a Service is a cloud development environment through which the provider delivers the hardware, the operative system, the application platforms and the entire stack required for development: the web server, the database management system, the supporting tools, the development tools and various resources used for the application creation and development. The PaaS model allows to avoid the costs and the complexity related to software, middleware, applications infrastructure and developing tools licences and purchasing.

With OpenShift it's possible to implement distributed, advanced and scalable services based on Docker containers, that combine applications with files from which they depend, making the development and production environments uniform and simplifying applications distribution.

Moreover, every application written using OpenShift can be developed also out of this environment, giving to developers the chance to easily move, avoiding in this way the vendor lock-in and enabling possible future migrations of the developing environment.